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Motorcycle Pilgrimage chapter 3

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

.. After the dust- bowl town with the Angel and the woodruff key, we were on Route 66 and westward bound. Gas was cheap back then our slim wallets still had enough to get to ‘the city’ in California.

The bar up ahead looked promising after all that desert in Nevada. It appeared to have just been dropped into place. A small parking lot with two cars, one of them with California plates. There was literally, nothing visible from horizon to horizon. Just the endless highway. A few dust devils and actual sagebrush.

Out of the saddles and into the bar we strode, awkwardly as riding can do things to your body that doesn’t relate to standing and walking. It’s just the odd feeling from all that vibration that your hands are on opposite arms. Weird. Akin to my illusions at sea when land would not be visible. After a few weeks in the ‘middle’ if the ocean, it seems the ship is standing still and the water is flowing by!

Any way, most motorcycle riders get the upside down hands thing after 100 miles or so, no one talks about it. Our bikes were a little rougher on the road than today’s huge highway cruisers. Bruce’s BMW was a little smoother than the Indian Tomahawk/Enfield. I shudder even now thinking how it would have been on the 600cc Matchless single.

So after we shook off the muscle memories and went in, the bar had two women patrons and the barkeep. The two women were older and looked at those two young men like coyotes gazing upon a nice jack rabbit nearby. Smiles and almost instantly, an offer to cool down with a few cold ones. ‘Sure’! After a few (the women were drinking hard stuff) it was revealed that one of them was a California Senator and the other woman was the Senator’s aide.

Betty Fiorina was the Senators name, I never forgot it. It pops up now and then in the news and in my mind.

Lots of laughs and some mild flirtation ensued and it was time for the gals to hop into their Buick convertible and us to kick start the bikes and weave down the highway. Blood alcohol content, who cares? Not a car in sight and road hazards were an occasional sign and a few lizards or ruckchucks. 1. If you noticed, motorcycles now do not have kick starters. You have seen them in movies where you heave your body up in the saddle and push hard on the way down onto a pedal on the right side of the machine. It usually started on one kick.

Class act meets Brando and Lee Marvin and no one knew what to do except drink and laugh. Much later, a decade or two, I caught a name on some senate bill and it’s the same last name of the Senator they met. Family business. There was a photo and she looked very trim and self assured. Splitting image of mom.

Onward to Northern California and the back entrance to Berkeley on Shasta Road. Bruce was confident, I was just stunned. The place we wheeled up to had several chimneys, a tile roof and a pretty good view of the San Francisco bay . More class and style than either of us had ever experienced.

An old friend of Bruce’s, Charlie Jirousek, lived there with about six other people. He was a luthier and built guitars out of Brazilian Rosewood. So he was broke too. He also had a massive Malamute, North, that shed hair at a bodacious rate. A month later, Charlie covered the C.F. Martin logo on the tuning head with one of his, a mother of pearl arrow. His guitar business was called ‘Arrowhead’ I was concerned that even at this time, the Martin logo would encourage theft. It works. To this day musicians that hear of play it remark on it’s tone and beauty. “what is it?” I tell them to look inside the sound hole. Martin D-28.

Charlie had a big sack full of the hair and stated someday he would make a shirt out of it. 4 decades went by until the shirt appeared. It had an odd smell and dogs seemed attracted to Charlie. So The three of them spent a lot of time around the main living room fireplace playing guitars and eating peanut butter from Charlie’s jar. A half gallon jar. White bread used now and then. It was enjoyable for me to meet another person as pleasant and eccentric as we were.

To this day, I still enjoy a peanut butter sandwich with heavy butter on both slabs of bread. Add the thick crunchy style peanut butter. Those sandwich’s were free and the music was excellent and heart felt. A lot of joy around that fireplace.

We all knew what our lives were like as we played the same music. Leadbelly, Blind Blake, Willy McDowell. It’s called country blues music. There was one tune, Old Country Rock that just hit the spot. We played it a lot. It was pretty good. Norman Peterson / Jack Gator

1. Ruckchuck . An animal nearby in the weeds that makes a lot of noise. Scared away by an aluminum cooking pot swinging in front of our headlamps.

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Motorcycle Pilgrimage The beginning chapter 1

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment


The trip was instantly planned with my new friend Bruce, just back from ‘Nam’ and anxious for safer adventures. I was fairly fresh from overseas as well, with Comservron 6 and several tours in the Mediterranean and the six day war with Russia and Egypt. We were on the Israeli side. It was dicey over there too. Lot’s of military muscle being deployed. Older Navy people know the nomenclature. It seemed our nation was muddled up in several wars. Fubar was the term. Bruce and I knew the score, or we thought we did. I was better off at sea. Bruce had just recovered from the Jungle and I had just recovered from a shipmate trying to kill me. We were both suffering from PTSD and it felt so good to just go on our own. It was the summer of love and we needed some of that whatever it was, it sounded good to us.

Older motorcycles and younger riders seemed just the solution of affordable transportation.

We had an easy itinerary: Route 66 to California. Just head south and take a right. Back in the days of paper maps and freedom to improvise and walk the line between a long trip and danger. I sold my Austin Healey Sprite and Bruce had his Chevy Bel-Aire to trade for the bikes. I was offered a Matchless 500 single cylinder. I chose an Indian-Enfield 500 twin instead. Bruce got a BMW 500. The offer to me was a Matchless single cylinder. I declined that one for a long trip. It was like riding a vibrating pogo stick.



Off they went, both bikes with ‘sissy bars’ and their guitars strapped on behind us upright and some luggage and a camping tent. Money and a hunger for vistas unseen.

Good weather and full tanks and some spare parts, we left to head south first and catch 66 down by the Oklahoma panhandle. Camping was first choice and other than that, we didn’t have a clue about what was ahead. Just in our early twenties and now free to make our own travel choices.

Bruce had made some friends when he got back from China Beach. Those friends of his lived in ‘the city’ out west and that was good enough a destination as any. Money was tight. First adventure was in Omaha. Somehow we met a group of hippies, and were embraced as sojourners to the headquarters of the love movement; San Francisco.

The hippies took us to their home, right across the street from the big race track, Aksarben, (that odd name is Nebraska backwards). Beds available and very starry eyed girls seemed a pretty good place to stop over. Schedule? There wasn’t any and that allowed leeway. Waking up the next morning, both of us were greeted with a breakfast treat of a small pill. Guaranteed to be an interesting experience. The only thing I remember was being taken to Arby’s and trying to order food. The colorful mushrooms growing out of the counter mans chef’s hat got in the way of comprehending things. ‘Have you ever been experienced?’ went the song of the times.
A quick goodbye and we were back on the road for adventures that seemed to be working out pretty good, so far.

On down the road to Kansas and an uneventful ride until we stopped in Liberal. Foolishly, but with great enjoyment, we gave rides to more starry eyed and bored young girls on our bikes; exotic transportation. the young men on the sidewalk gave squinty eyed stares, the Clint Eastwood trouble for you look. We thought as veterans of two different wars, we deserved good attentions from everyone. We were not wearing our old uniforms.

It was great fun until the town’s police chief approached us and asked if we would like to stay overnight in the town jail! At first thought we wondered what we did wrong that would incur incarceration. The chief stated: “ It would be safer in my jail for you both.”


The doors to the cells only open one way and we declined the offer. that single officer in town told them: “Them boys is a comin’ for you tonight at your camp site”. “Oh. Well, we’ll take our chances chief , thanks for the offer.” was our reply.

The local young toughs came after them later that night.. (to be continued in Motorcycle pilgrimage series)

Atomic Child

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

It was 80 years ago when the City of Hiroshima was destroyed. It was exactly my first birthday. August 6th 1945. I just saw a friend holding his one year old child Sunday and him toddling off after he reached for my hand. D day was exactly two months before I was born, June 6th 1944. Those things got me to thinking about my life and betrayal by the world. It led to war and destruction and the loss of millions of lives. Lust and greed fueling it.

As many of us, I was betrayed. My best friend in the Navy did so. My first love and fiance left me secretly. The girl I was in love with when I lived on the West Bank had a sexual liaison while we were staying with my father in California. Dad was betrayed by my mother. When my girl visited an ‘old friend’ while we were at my Dad’s, she slept with that friend. My dad’s response when she returned late that night was: “they all do that” It got to be normal life for me.

I grew wary and found it impossible to get involved with anyone, especially women. I never knew why really, as many of us do, we just think these sorts of things are normal life. There are details of my life about these things that I do not reveal, they are too personal and harsh. Even for this writing to the public and my family. Just like the world’s history. I will some day.

Then today, while I was reading about WWII and all of these thoughts were prancing about in my mind, The sun came through the building storm clouds. It shone right on my face as I sat in the living room with a history book in my lap. I heard: “ I was betrayed by my friend too, and I know exactly what you have been through” Comforted and even cradled I was overwhelmed. “I will never betray nor forsake you” Words from the creator of everything.

The last time I was betrayed was the newspaper Editor that printed these sorts of things I write. Too much Jesus and we will have to let you go he said. I am comforted and affirmed now when I remember my response: “Will you then allow me a final column to tell my readers I can’t write a column every week, that it’s a burden”? It was printed and I did not betray him and the owner of the paper. It was a lie of course, but it seemed like the decent thing to do. After all, they would not print the truth of the matter.

The friend that sold me out for his addiction in the navy converted to faith in our savior Jesus shortly after I visited him on his dead bed in Maryland. I was permitted to see him pass into Eternity on the exact time he died thousands of miles away. He told me as he disappeared , “It’s better than you said!” It was a turning point in my life to say the least of it. His wife was comforted as I spoke with her later that day.

There is no room to prevaricate about the state of the world now, it is filled with anger and betrayal and is not surprising to me. The words I heard when that glow of the Son warmed my face this morning are timeless and eternal truth. I am loved and held forever. Norm Peterson “the Gator”

Discovering Friends

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

It would seem like a natural event. Developing a friendship with someone that attracts your attention. Usual things. “It is not a reward for our discriminating and good taste” A. As usual, these things occur as a chosen event.

Examining friends of my past, I wonder about these things. What was it about Bruce for example that brought us together? Being the only veterans at an after hours beer joint?

It seemed so at the beginning when I offered him a shabby room to ‘crash’ where I lived in the other shabby room. A run down neighborhood on the wrong side of the tracks. A dump really. Bruce drove a really nice Austin Healy and I had my grandfathers old Buick. Ah yes, it was that both of us played guitar! You would think so, I did.

We both had things to teach one another and that was not obvious to either of us. It seems to me he had more to teach me but that isn’t the point at all. Neither of us had a clue about what to do with our lives and how to do it. Wine, women and song had been tried and found wanting.

Laughing a lot with the ‘Park Lanes” he smuggled in from Viet Nam in his stereo. We played music and found jobs with a third rate mobster that knew we had nothing to loose and had made our bones in the military. He spent six months at China Beach recovering from a near miss and I spent six months at hard labor paying for another near miss in Spain. Blown out of the military and we were brothers almost instantly. “you too! I thought I was the only one” B.

We traded the two cars for motorcycles and headed out on the highway, lookin’ for adventure. The song by Steppenwolf fit perfectly. We indeed, were born to be wild. We listened to that record along with Cream and other early metal music. Those songs were the ones that Bruce played while he drove through the ‘viles’ in Vietnam. Top volume on a loudspeaker on the roof of his 6×6. He would stop and show movies as part of the Psyops program while I was across the world in a top secret room getting messages from the CNO about our little war.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Big guns and missiles, or automatic weapons and people that were the unfriendly kind. Take your pick, no choice really.

My columns ‘motorcycle pilgrimage’ have the details but what is more amazing is the arranged coincidences that enabled Bruce and I to meet and listen to one another.

We had adventure, whatever came and that was at the same time that Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper acted in Easy Rider. 1968. Bikes with kick starters and sleeping bags. Our guitars strapped on ‘sissy bars’. Not custom choppers like the movie, just an old Enfield and a BMW.

Death threats, lost highways off of route 66, Angels appearing and a Senator in the desert. Adventure we went on willingly, not the adventures we had in the military. We were in control and that is another great illusion of life.As music itself touches us in the deep parts, timeless music that goes beyond the spoken word or even the words of a song, the arrangement of the eternal music draws us closer to life.

All of our lives are parts in the everlasting orchestra and the conductor has set us for His pleasure in the first chair. Chosen by Him.

Bruce was and is my closest friend. And still is as time streams by so fast. He died years ago and I did not even know he was ill. That happens a lot to me. There is so much I do not know about these things. Why am I the survivor? It would seem many wondrous things have since come about, and I write about the blessings and struggles of life that we all know.

The conductor and author of the grand symphony has the score and we watch and pray as he once again, raises His baton and puts life before us. We indeed, are His instruments of the beauty we get a view of now and then. The love and hatred, losses and treasures. Pain and health all allowed and known on that narrow, beautiful road we all walk. It’s pretty good. Norm

A.& B. C.S. Lewis The problem of Pain

Bruce and his wife Cindy with me at their home in Minneapolis

A Door Gunner and the Old Fiddler

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

It was a beautiful drive, one I take often to a small church about 8 miles north. On Fridays that old Lutheran church gives away bread from a bakery 80 miles south. Every Friday for years they have done so. I pick up as many bags as they will give me as I give away most of to a local secondhand store about 7 miles to the East. Caring Hearts. I like to drive those rural roads.

Today, I drove past a place of good memories, on a lake called Wood and glanced at the places on the road before the lake that I like to look at. Old abandoned houses that used to be pretty swell and houses that have acres of metal junk around them. Wind-rowers, hay loaders, antique bulldozers. Tons of steel, waiting for nothing, akin to tossing old scrap lumber out to be burned out in the field thing. How that stuff got out there and what the price of steel is going for occurs to me. Reminds me of an old forest that is past it’s prime and the mess that is too. Wood lying about is a lot easier to look at.

I drove past wood Lake (we have a lot of nice ones nearby) and remembered an old friend that was a veteran like me. He had it rougher and served on Helicopters shooting people out of the door with a belt fed machine gun. A .50 or .30 caliber. Don’t remember him mentioning that. A war in Vietnam that no one wanted, a war I was drafted into as I was in basic training for the Navy! I just missed that meat grinder. A returning veteran was hated by many Jane Fonda fans. Danny Carlson was this veteran’s name. He was friendly to me and our stories were good to share with one another.

Danny knew I was a country western fiddler on the local bar circuit and he wanted to have some fun and put on a fiddle contest at his lake shore home. OK, I got hold of another fiddler, Bill Hinkley, and we set it up with a stage overlooking the lake and advertising it at the local watering holes. We even took out an add in the newspaper. This was a big deal for towns under 2000.

We got a half dozen fiddlers to show up for the chance for the 1st place prize and the beer kegs would set the stage for some good fun. Bill and I started out demonstrating what fiddling was with Bill’s wife Judy on guitar. Then we started the contest. Bill, I and Judy (official judges) got to sit right up front on the beautiful manicured grass which sloped gently down to the lake. Quite a few people showed up.

Good acoustics too from the water. Near the end, an older fiddle player showed up. He was at least as old as I am now and needed a bow. We got him one and he started sawing away. His tone was off and the speed wasn’t there, but the Bill and I and Judy looked at one another with a nod. This was the stuff of legends. We knew what this man had been and in our ears, still was. Bad bow, arthritic hands, bent over and knowing it was the best he could do. We gave him the 1st place without a doubt. Bill and I were thinking that we can even play at this man’s age we would be blessed to fiddle as well as he was. Uncle Zeke was his name and where he was from and were he went is still a mystery.

“The struggles and events of his life are just the cover and chapter page of the book of his life. The book no one on earth can read is the real story and every chapter is better than the last” 1.

Dan a short time afterwards, died across the road from his lake home in his trucking outfits office from carbon monoxide gas. In his sleep. My wife, Julie almost died from the same danger from a bad propane furnace way out west when she was camp counselor before I met her.

So Every time I drive past Danny’s old lake home I think of these things and ask Jesus, why? Why take Dan and spare my wife with only a bad headache and some temporary cognitive loss’? We will never know until I read that book of real stories that I can’t read now.

Somehow, in some way I find that answer adequate. I still ask why these things happen and am getting better and waiting for the answer I already know. Ask me sometime and I will let you in on what He says to me. Usually stop, look and listen. I am so glad Julie survived that carbon Monoxide and we have this incredible life together. Thank you Lord!

Somehow I know there will be that book about Danny I can read and I will read it with him. I will share those books with my old Navy buddy that will hand me his book as he reads mine. It’s pretty good. I like reading really good books.

Norm Peterson. (aka Jack Gator)

1. G.K. Chesterton “the apostle of common sense”

A Sister at Laguna Beach

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

The Laguna greeter.

There was a time in my life that I was a dedicated surfer. I moved in with the president of my old high school class (King?) and far from being the outcast weirdo in high school, now I was one to be admired. With borrowed a surfboard from a slightly older young man who lived downstairs from the apartment in Hermosa Beach. There was a bond instantly between them as they both had the same last name and were both slightly autistic and emotionally intense in various ways. Different and knowing they both were.

So, I went to the beach every day and learned how to surf. Readers of this column will remember that time in the article, ‘Super Chief’ I just loved surfing and was totally committed to it. I slept on the floor of my room with the board next to me so I would rise early without disturbing the other young men and walk a half a block down to the beach. Except for the jellyfish, it was a time in my life that means a lot to me 50 years later.

At one of the parties in the apartment, a young woman (girl) took a fancy to me and slipped into my room during the party and I offered her the other side of the surfboard to lie on. No seduction. Genuine friendship and it astonished her and there was a bond, a different young man that treated her with respect and friendship. Carrie is her name

She never forgot that and after a year or so, I was in San Diego, Navy training base. After basic, I went to A school at the same base. and was then training young Naval men radio operations. I had a background in radio from my amateur radio days and still held a general class license.

I wondered if Carrie, was still at her Uncles place in Laguna Beach. I called her and she was pleased. She asked me to visit on a weekend. Since I was now on staff, I had every weekend off. I even had civilian clothes to wear. Little did I know I was in a pretty good situation right out of boot camp.

Because I washed out of the nuclear submarine service (bad color vision.) I was no longer striking for nuclear technician,so they told me I would be a radio operator. They knew my skills at being one. I trained young men in Morse code in A school and basic electronics. It was the best duty assignment I had with the Navy. Myself, I learned how to touch type listening to code. Nice thing to know when the code comes at 30 wpm

The San Diego bus to Los Angeles went right through Laguna Beach and I went to see Carrie. She picked me up at the bus stop and drove me to her Uncles place in the hills. She drove 1957 Corvette convertible, bright red and powerful with the first stock fuel injection in a sports car. Her Uncle was on an extensive art tour in Europe at that time and the car was there for her to use. A wealthy art dealer in Europe and he had a pretty good ‘duty station’ too! I never met him nor know his name.

So, I would come up every weekend and lounge around the pool that overlooked the ocean and do a little painting (with Uncles paint equipment. The brushes, canvas, tripod and acrylic paints.) Occasionally my new ‘sister’ would bring a young man home and introduce that man to me as her brother was a way of overcoming the puzzled look I got from the men. I liked that immensely. My ‘organic’ sister never liked me.

They were one-night stands and that was understood by all. A new sister that liked him, I liked that. One weekend, I called my old high school president that was living in the Hollywood hills and asked ‘sis’ if he can borrow the Corvette.

The occasional boyfriends never even got a nod with that question. She knew when they started saying “Hey Carrie can I….NO” I drove up to LA and visited my old buddies who were living large in the Frank Lloyd Wright Circular apartments. Class. The red Corvette fit right in at the curb and I got a smile nod from everyone I saw. Poseur.

That corvette was fast on the freeway!

Back at the beginning of the city of Laguna, the Greeter there gave me a wave. (The greeter was a man that stood for years at the north end of the city and waved at cars)

All in all it only lasted a season of my life and made a big difference in both of us. She shared her heart in a way nether of them thought they would do or even contemplate and it was a good start on real relationships for them both. They had no idea they were both being trained in their hearts near the ocean and some of it stuck. Carrie treasured my paintings too, she said they would be worth a lot of money when I became famous. Still waiting for that, I’ll send her my book if she is still there.

It’s pretty good.  Norm Peterson RM4 Comservron 6 Naples, Italy

Never betray Love

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

It was a child’s romance. A romance brought into full bloom by trauma and the need to escape it somehow. Fresh from the military that literally tortured me, my path beckoned me strongly to dissolve myself in marriage, somehow.

The only job I had when I got home after discharge was performing songs learned from warm and scratchy vinyl recordings. Joan Baez, Peter, Paul & Mary, Carolyn Hester. The job at the YMCA for youth was better right away than the red line brig in Spain and got me the attention I craved. A brand new Martin D-28 Helped it happen.

At that time the Brazilian rosewood model was an even $400. I bought it right off the exhibition wall at Schmidt music instantly when I came home. I had one shipped overseas a year before and it never showed up and no one knew where it had gone. I had paid the cost and Schmidt’s had the invoice. No charge with hard-shell case ready to play. They even tossed in some strings. I still own it.

I met my fiancé at the YMCA gig and she ditched her date and I drove her home that night. I began to meet her family and she and I became young lovers. I was living in my Mother’s basement and we spent times down there accompanied by the washing machines loud symphonies. An old habit of hers surfaced and she ditched me.

My beloved disappeared. I frantically swam through all the places she should be, and finally, a good friend told me years later that she had run off with an actor from the famous Guthrie. She was a ticket taker at the theater and easy sexual prey to be taken by a Lothario of the stage. After all, better prospects than a recently discharged service man living in his mother’s basement.

Stunned again by sudden betrayal, I went deep into the rabbit hole and gave up the promised good life and got involved with another vet who hooked me up with some heroin smugglers in California.

(check out Motorcycle pilgrimages on gatorsgracenotes.com)

Money, a mansion in the hills of Berkeley and using my Military skill set, I became a member of the air force of drug smugglers. I was an experienced radio operator and built a portable air to ground Ground to ground radio. Flight plans were Mexico to the California desert.

We had a steady customer in The City, Sly stone and the musicians that lived there. My pilot gave me the magic white powder that the whole team was using. I thought, wow what a gift.

Heroin gave me relief from all the pain of life. The poppy blooming in my core became the path to victory. No back pain, no mental anguish, no fears. Just nirvana and total oblivion. Betrayal covered by powder on glass.

Deep into addiction, a voice entered my room in the mansion just as I was getting ready to snort a line of the drug. The voice said Five simple words: “Life or death, choose now” Stupefied and thinking hard about voices from the thin air, I chose life and was instantaneously delivered from my death path. No withdrawal. No craving.

Of course, the swell new job was over and the usual reaction was another betrayal and a narrow escape. I left the flying circus of Berkeley close to the ocean trade, alive and another life came upon me. I lived in my home made camper truck for a while and played that Martin front of Safeway stores. I got rescued again by a friend and finally made it back to Minneapolis.

Back home to a drug free city government gang that drove cabs. I was a Hippie restaurant singer and dishwasher and then got a good job as a steel track worker that finally paid well. The city gang was left for the railroad gang, but Something was awry and had to be done for freedom from the inside pain upon me again. Never trust your heart to another. That was entrenched into my very being, traumas of the past.

Through that old city friend, I found my ex’fiancé’ locked in a mental ward downtown and bluffed my way in posing as a youth pastor to see her. Her father was the senior pastor at Central Lutheran and I knew him from the visits, and meals when I was engaged.

My old lover was heavily drugged and overweight, groggy but she came into focus for a short time and asked me “why are you here?” ‘Because I love you!’ came quicker than thought and the pain of that rejection was over. There is still other trauma within me but I am learning how to quickly recognize it and shut off old learned instincts of survival and to run away from perceived trauma.

The heroin that never lasted and blinded me to the fact that the miracle of deliverance was love. This was Jesus seeing and telling me truth about what I really was. The the light grows slowly but surely. There are plans being revealed to me to take me to places I can’t imagine. Places of trust. Real fulfillment. Reality. Now I am writing columns to others to share that love.

‘Never betray the sword, never betray beauty, and never betray a friend’. It’s a good way to see the life we live as men and warriors of the Word. Freedom from fear and self hatred is a special gift that can only come from our Lord and Savior Jesus.

“I sacrifice the land unto you, all who I love there, and who loved me: I sacrifice this land unto you, and all who I love there, and who loved me; when I have put our seas between them and me, Put Your seas between my sins and thee.

As the trees sap do seek the root below In winter now I go where none but you, the Eternal root of true love I may know.” John Donne ‘Hymn to Christ’

It’s pretty good. Jack Gator

Autobiography of Norm Chapter 5

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

Things in the sixth fleet were perking along pretty well. I was informed by my team that I was allowed to have an apartment in Naples as it was our home port. I found one through shipboard scuttlebutt and moved into a classy five story shopping center, the Galleria Umberto. The entire roof was glass and the view from the top floors was magnificent.

My landlady was very experienced with navy borders and gave me all the lowdown on her rules of the place and the lack of heat in this beautiful masterpiece of a building which is made of marble. The use of a gas space heater was available to me. It was winter in Naples and there is no snow but it was chilly. The galleria was built in 1887 and central heating was not part of the construction plan. It was, and is, a shopping center. Way ahead of the Mall of America.

Also as an advantage to having Naples as my home port I also wore ‘civies’ when I was ‘on the beach’ (civilian clothing and on land) We weren’t in Naples a whole lot of the time, but it was pleasant to buy clothing to wear in town and not be conspicuous as a military person.

I met a very pleasant English girl touring and dressed in my Harris tweeds looked respectable.

I invited her to join me on the local train to Pompeii to view the very old ruins from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius 79 AD. The town was buried in 9 feet of volcanic ash so there are a lot of body impressions and quite a few buildings there. I love history and so did she. Unfortunately all of the extremely pornographic frescoes also were preserved and the train ride back to Naples was pretty quiet and she left quickly at the station. She did not understand it was the first time for me to visit the ancient ruins as well. The brief friendship was nice but later on I lost all the nice clothes including the Harris tweed jacket. A total misunderstanding with the Navy.

Once I was out late and walking out of the elevator to get to my room, the iron gate to the extended walkway was locked. No problem. I just hopped up on the railing and twisted around to the other side. I did not look down to the marble floor five stories below. I was surprised that I would do this bold move but I wondered about the real sailors who climbed the rigging to the top gallant sails back before my enlistment. The elevator took a 10 lire coin to go up but the sailors who used them had a trick to avoid the coin slot. Press the call button and just a moment before the elevator stops, push the stop button, open the door and push the floor you want to go to. It hits bottom and then heads back up with out a stop nor complaint. 10 lire which was nicknamed the ‘deech’ worth about a penny or two. Old time game console just for fun.

I had an alarm clock in my cold apartment so I get back to fleet landing in time. It would have been interesting if it was built at this time so if I recorded a wake up sound of my own. “Reveille, reveille, all hands turn to and trice up. Sweepers, sweepers man your brooms. The smoking lamp is lit in all authorized spaces. Now reveille, reveille”

That greeting at 6 comes every morning on the 1MC speakers. (Except when we were in the war and everyone was standing 24/12 watches.) This wake up call was accompanied by a bosun’s whistle in the beginning which started out high and dropped about two octaves at the end. It was very akin to a locomotive steam whistle at RR crossings on the last of the letter Q. Long-long-short-long. I always liked that sound of the lonesome long end note. Sounds like a lonesome loon call. I Still like it. Not the reveille part though. Old navy stuff. Sweepers? Smoking lamps? Back again to the tall ship sailors who slept in hammocks. (that’s the trice up part) Another tradition that all military embrace. Comforting to be linked to the past. We did not sleep in hammocks but the bunks were tightly placed. Your head, next bunk beside you, his feet.

Rising up in the morning, getting my dress blues on and walking down to fleet landing to catch a ride on the liberty boat. There was a push cart vendor on the dock that sold hot sugar donuts that were big around. On those cold winter mornings in Naples those warm donuts were a saving grace to an espresso picked up on the walk down. Still like that morning sugar and caffeine blast. I use cinnamon and sugar on my toast now. Tradition.

As I reminisce and still see and hear those things of 60 years past, I also thank my Lord Jesus for the memories and the sharp recall of those times. Memories I can give to others and the stories found to be uplifting and reassuring in many ways. He has told me so.

Think upon your past as you also realize this miracle of life and a lot of the lessons learned. I must have a lot to learn as I realize I am still here and getting somewhat older. Or old period. He loves me, he loves you. As my favorite movie of all time, is titled “It’s a wonderful life” Indeed Clarence, it is.

Norm Jack Gator

Tolstoy and the Endless Fireworks of Life

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

The flash and flare in the east and it is time. Move away from the comfort and deep sleep, awaken to
dawn. Shut of the alarm clock, rise to the circadian rhythm of my body. Grasp my robe from the hanger on the back of our bedroom door. Close the bathroom door and glance at my tousled hair. A small pleasure in the new toilet seat that lowers itself slowly and doesn’t bang.


There are duties and places to be and now, it’s easier to find things because there is light beginning to arrive from the east. There is a small Brownian movement from the dust and I turn on the coffee maker. Go back in the parlor and open the side draft, rake the coals and put on a few pieces of wood.

I Find the good bread and drop two slices in with the timer set to max. The good bread is heavy. I ponder finding the cash for that upgrade on my cell phone already as I check the wood stove. Can we afford it? After all, everyone in the family has a new phone. Mine is old and I need to be current. It is the state of made things, they are old by the date they are put for sale. New and improved. No ‘good till’ or expired dates on your cell phone, but now I can’t find a screen guard to replace the cracked one. “You have to get a new one, yours is several years old. How much? Only 35 bucks a month forever.

It’s better with the shredded wheat on the shelf, we all know it’s good for a few years on our shelf. Silly thoughts along with dream remnants that linger until they too, pass into the storage area in my mind that is never too full and unavailable now and then.


There is a shuffle and purpose at hand to indeed waken fully and the hot caffeine warms my old ceramic
cup. Carefully, set it down besides the fresh toast and open up a book next to the vitamins and various
pills. The accouterments of morning rituals. The book now at hand is a collection of short stories that take slow reading to understand. Sarte, Sallinger and the rabbit eared current choice is Tolstoy’s ‘The death of Ivan Illych’

Nothing to it. Toast and coffee and a little orange juice to sluice down a hearty meal of existential
writing and with some of the greatest short stories ever written. It’s still early and my son is stirring a
bit. I come to the part of the story when Ivan knows he is dying and no one will be honest with him
about how they feel about it and him. Only a peasant boy tells him the truth.

A quote from la Rochefoucauld is remembered: “One can neither stare long at the sun nor at death” During the war the thought was, it will come quickly It did to that shipmate on the horizon. It was close but I am OK. Next stop, Palma De Mallorca. Great liberty! My acquaintances ship has been sunk over the horizon. Tough luck. Time to celebrate after freedom from with the liberty boat and have a few drinks in his memory.


We go on, inwardly feeling we will live forever and poor old Ivan, it must have been his diet or that he
just wouldn’t go to gymnasium as they advised him so many times. After all, his whist game was more
important to him. There was nothing to be done. and here I am hundreds of years later, dressed for a church funeral service. I am Still in my book and almost awake.

A funeral then to go to. The fact that we are soon to be in that silken and narrow box does not cross our conscience. Even when the preacher tells us we are off the hook by death of Jesus’ sacrifice, we do not comprehend the sacrifice, it’s not totally understood. Tithe well and we might walk as Enoch did and not have to suffer as Ivan illych did. That’s it! The second coming and it will all work out! Don’t worry, be happy.

Death is defeated knowledge lingers and we are all good to go. Mourning seems to have passed us by. Ask not who the bell tolls for, it’s you. Old Ivan, it was his time to go. The rest of our family is up and dressed and we drive a dozen miles to the church for a funeral for a neighbors son.

Is there lunch after this funeral? Should be. It’s good here at the church of endless life. Maybe if I get in line before every one else does! I do not want to miss that apple pie I saw as I walked by the kitchen!

No one knows the hour of our death. People of faith in Jesus know what His resurrection means for us. Still, I like it here and I know my loved ones will have Shiva at the house. I do not like to think about the weeping, just as I wept as the coffin wheeled by me and I reached from my seat and gently prayed as the polished wood slid beneath my extended fingers. A young boy taken from us in tragedy.

Live well, love well and spend a lot of time speaking and listening to our creator that knew us when we were yet to be born. “why me?” “why am I here and what am I to do? I ask of Him. He answers gently. “I knew you would know the joy and sorrows of life and I Like how you write and talk about it and Me. That seems pretty good.

Jack Gator

How much is it Worth?

/ Norman Eric Peterson / Leave a comment

It was just a memento, really. A friend had given me the coin, in honor of my service in the six day war, back in the middle sixties. (The story is in my column, Soaring.) It is a recollection of the times at sea when my ship was threatened by a Russian guided missile Frigate at night.

That young woman could buy a coffee in Jerusalem at a Cofix store or some noodles with the coin, but it meant more than that. It was a confirmation from a total stranger that Jesus holds her tight, and will always love her. Right here right now. It’s pretty good. Jack Gator.

The rescue came from ‘above’ with a tomcat fighter on our side of the war. Battle group stuff.No body died at that time but it was very terrifying nonetheless. For both ships and crews.

So, many decades later, that five shekel coin wound up on my dresser. Covered with dust many times and mostly forgotten with the usual dresser top debris. Pens, pencils, notes on small post it pads and a jewelry box with alligator pins, bow ties and very ancient and worthless cuff links. There even was an old hand-held ham radio transceiver up there with a nice whip antenna. Battery was dead. I found the charger and the battery works. Two meter rig, handier than a cell phone with 5 watts instead of 1/2 or less.

One day, a Sunday, I was getting ready to go to my volunteer position on a prayer team. Early in the morning as the church was about an hour and a quarter drive away. I grabbed a handful of quarters to buy an espresso and at the last moment put them aside on my desk and grabbed the 5 shekel coin and pocketed it. No reason really, just felt right in my left jean pocket. It belonged there that day.

On the somewhat dark morning drive there was a whisper in my spirit that I was to give the coin to the first person I met when I walked in the door. This is an interesting time of day to get into the church as it doesn’t open the doors until 8. I had left a message with a pastor that oversees the facility that I would be in early. I was being dropped off by my son who works at another campus of the Eagle Brook church nearby (Blaine) He is a director of the media department and has to come in early to set up the equipment and test the simulcast stuff. I was early at 7 and walked up to the big doors from the parking lot and it was pretty quiet. Lots of parking at that time!

When I reached the locked doors, a woman inside the second set of ‘airlock’ doors smiled, and came right up and opened the outside door and greeted me by name. Very pleasant considering there are over 800 staff people in the organization. Ten times that many volunteers. I dug into my left hand pocket and handed her the Israeli coin. I told her briefly why I did so. She widened her eyes and told me I did not know how much this meant to her. She is a missionary to Israel, is involved with these things and later, at an early gathering on the second floor, she gave it to a young woman that was going to Israel soon. Her plane had been canceled due to the new war.

This post was written several years ago. Since that time I have moved to the Blaine Campus and am an assistant director in production. I still slip down and join the prayer team if they have need. Dual chitizenship!