A World Ago

by Dorien Grey

  Are you getting Life every week? Please do and save them for me, since I never get a chance to see them over here. Time and Newsweek have European editions in English, so I buy them whenever I can.

  I look forward to our pending tour to the United States with much more enthusiasm than I did our jaunt to Europe.

  Have you gotten my journal in the big envelope yet? You should have, it had a two day head start, at least. I’m still working on the Paris trip—still haven’t gotten past the first day!!! I’m telling you everything I did, except for occasional trips to the rest room and regular inhaling and exhaling.

  I hope to have enough money scraped together to go to Rome next time we hit Naples (sometime in February—not counting from the 29th of this month till the 2nd of Jan.)

  Bunch of NATO VIPs on board; Turkish, Greek, Italians, etc. They all look loaded down with brass and medals.

  Twenty-five minutes to taps and I’ve got to take a shower. So, till next time, I send

  Love

  Roge

  28 December 1955

  As we proceed deeper into invoices, reports, and card catalogues, the temperament of our little group gets progressively worse. Coutre and Nick will be at each other’s throats in a matter of minutes, while I sit—if not aloof then at least aside—and enjoy everything. I’m in one of my prolonged good moods where nothing bothers me too much.

  You know, I’ll have a little outline all set up in my mind of what I want to put down, and then some irrelevant little thought will come scooting across my head and completely short-circuit the whole thing. Coutre, hunting for an elusive $59.31, has just slammed out the door on his way to parts unknown, and Nick’s opinion is that “I don’t much give a damn.” They’ve both been working until two every morning, so I guess you really can’t blame them. Got four new mess cooks in today, which came as a very pleasant surprise. That brings our complement back up to 132, a figure we have not seen for some time now. We’re supposed to have 139 or thereabouts. Tomorrow we’re getting in a new batch, and the 6th of Jan we’re replacing 35 or 40, which always makes for an interesting day. It seems the object of Coutre’s search was a certain invoice—I like to think of it as our Holy Grail.

  —(Signifying passage of time.) And it seems as though there may be a happy ending for our little brood; the $59.31 has been found! Let there be singing and dancing in the streets. The Holy Grail has not been found, but we’re busy making a new one, and all is forgiven between Nick and Cou. Through all this drama, I have played the part of a Christmas tree on the 4th of July, and been as useful. Our two weeks’ extension has been confirmed. That means (more statistics) we will have been away from home seven and one half months—longer, incidentally, than any carrier has spent over here at any one stretch since the war. I still keep glancing at my wrist to see what time it is. Oh, well. I have a watch in mind that I’ll get when I get home, but won’t be able to afford till then. I’m afraid I’m getting a “below-decks” pallor—the two minutes I spent in the sun today almost wilted me, so I hurried back to the soft neon lights in the ships interior. Well, back to the Paris adventures….

  Postcard postmarked “U.S.S. Ticonderoga, CVA 14, Dec.29, l955, 9 a.m.

  Subject: The Eiffel Tower

  Dear Folks,

  Well, here I am. The stores are all set up for Xmas, and the weather is to match. Having a good time so far, but so cloudy I didn’t take any pictures (not many, anyway). Tomorrow we go to Versailles. Already spent over 1,000 francs ($5.00).

  Love,

  Roge

  Note the postmark—I couldn’t find any French stamps to mail it from there.

  30 December 1955

  Just returned from what I intend to be my last trip to dear old Naples. The only reason I’d gone over today was to buy a statuette for mother—one I’d seen before and fallen in love with—only to find it had been sold.

  Made a rather flying trip through the Naples Museum which, in my humble estimation, is worth all the rest or Naples put together. Here are kept most of the things taken from Pompeii and Herculaneum.

  The building itself is unimpressive, of the same heavy, dull construction as the rest of the city. Upon entering, you face a long, high arcade, lined on both sides with posturing Roman noblemen and women, frozen forever in marble. At the far end, a stairway climbs upward—halting before a huge torso of Jupiter, then dividing and going up around on either side.

  The corridors of the museum may as well have been the halls of time, and as I walked, I saw them all; the gods and the men. Caligula, mad Emperor and ancestor of an even more mad Emperor, Nero. Octavious Augustus, Rome’s first Emperor; Tiberius, basically a good ruler, who passed the Empire to Caligula, his nephew, upon his death; Marcellus, whom Caligula had put to death as Christianity began to seep into the world; Claudius—“stupid” club-footed Uncle Claudius, who was neither and became Emperor after Caligula’s inevitable assassination. They stand in dark bronze, staring at one another across a narrow corridor; all but Caligula, who sits astride a full size horse in the great hall directly across from his contemporaries, relatives, and ancestors.

  While the men are in bronze, the Gods are mostly in marble—Diana, Juno, Mercury, Bacchus, Jupiter, Apollo; all in cold smooth perfection.

  These are the monuments and statues that adorned the streets, homes and temples of two cities that died long ago so that the future could benefit by their deaths.

  One thing I noticed on the bronze statues and busts—most of them had gaping holes where the eyes were. I wondered about this until a guard explained that the eyes had been silver, and placed in the heads. He then showed me some with the eyes still in them—I prefer them eyeless. With the light eyes staring from lashless lids and bronze faces, the effect was discomforting, if not downright ugly; they appear fish-eyed and staring.

  In smaller rooms off the main statuary halls were fountain ornaments—beautifully done. I wouldn’t have known that was what they were if I hadn’t been told. Two dogs attacking a wild boar; a laughing Bacchus with his mouth upraised to a skin of wine; a coiled serpent; a fisherman on a rock with a pole and a look of amazement on his face. Lamps that lighted houses and gardens, all wrought with a precision that amazes me, and would anyone.

  Up the stairs and around Jupiter, through an enormous hall with more modern (Renaissance) paintings and tapestries, to the left, and once again back in Pompeii. Here sections of walls from Pompeiian homes, showing colors less faded in 2,000 years than those in the city outside do in ten. Their walls were murals, depicting everything from landscapes to the lives of prominent ancestors. Almost every one with people having a god in it somewhere. Their gods were very real, having the same temperament and petty jealousies as we mortals—they were above and yet part of the people, mingling with them; not like the older or newer aloof gods, who are divine by remote control

  Next come rooms of goods actually touched and used by the people who honored the men and worshipped the gods—dentists’ tools, including small highly-polished brass mirrors for looking in the patient’s mouth. Cups, plates, silverware, even food, left on tables as those who owned them ran out into the dark streets, or fled in chariots through the clogged city gates.

  Toys, trinkets, water vases, sieves, nets, tools, rope, clothing—a real and marvelous Brigadoon, excepting that when it awoke, only a few of its people remained, as still as the gods in the temples.

  In one corner are cases with the apparel of the gladiators—steel and therefore more durable than the almost unrecognizable shreds of cloth. The helmets of many various designs—some very elaborate, some like those worn by “knights in armor,” who came many, many years after the cheering had died in the amphitheater. Knives still in their scabbards—spear tips; the bloodier aspect of a wondrous era.

  But in the next room came the sight that thrilled me most—Pompeii itself, in scale and exact down to the last fallen columns in a small garden. It covers an area of about 50 by 50 feet, and shows even the mosaics on the f
loors and the paintings (what few there are left) on the walls. I fell head over heels in love with it—a huge, gigantic, wonderful toy. I stared at it for a good twenty minutes until the guard came and told me that museum was closed for the night.

  31 December 1955 9 p.m.

  Dear Folks

  No mail in almost a week—what’s wrong? Every day I look for it, thinking it’ll be sure to catch up, but it doesn’t. Oddly enough, I keep thinking “Grandpa Fearn’s dead and they’re waiting till after the funeral.” Don’t mean to be morbid and God forbid anything happening to Grandpa for at least fifty years. But you should write more often and let me know what’s going on.

  Tonite is New Year’s Eve and, like Christmas, is just another day. There was a time—I especially remember 1944 when each year going out seemed like a major tragedy—I waited up (you’d gone to the Moose Club) and watched the year going, and wished and wished it would stay; 1945 sounded alien and unbelievable, where 1944 was old and familiar. And here it is 1955–56—the changing of a number—a new set of calendars, and a year older—nothing more. I may not even stay up to see the New Year in.

  Please tell me all about Christmas, and what everybody got, and what you did Christmas Eve. And if Dad didn’t stay home all day Christmas day, I’ll be mighty displeased with him. Of course, neither of you will say, but I’ll find out when I get home (225 days!)

  Have you made that picture appointment yet? I’d like both of you in it, if it can be arranged--and don’t be satisfied with the first shot they hand you if you don’t like it, have them take several so you’ll have a choice.

  If it’s halfway decent tomorrow, Nick and I and a couple of the other guys are going to Pompeii—by cab. It’ll be cheaper in the long run and we can spend more time there. I like Pompeii, dead as it is, a thousand times better than Naples, Genoa, or Cannes. I’ll hold judgment on Gibraltar, and won’t include Paris, since there is only one Paris.

  I’m feeling fine—my cold is still hanging on by its fingernails. Someone stole my flat-hat (my little blue bonnet) and I’ll have to wait till Wed. to buy another.

  I’ve been given my own little calculator (borrowed from Disbursing) for the duration of inventory; all my very own—to love and to play with and to keep forever and ever. And I just played with it for a while. Oh, what fun! To press the little buttons and hear it hum and sing to itself as it thinks out the answer. Oh, joy! …. EH!

  Someone once said a man with an abacus could beat a calculator. I’d like to try, but you would be amazed at how few abacuses (?) we have on board!

  Well, tempus fugit, though I wouldn’t know it, not having a watch. By the way, that is not a hint. I’ll get one when I have the money, not until. Anyone who is ass enough to have a watch stolen right off his arm while he’s stone sober deserves to go without for awhile.

  More later….WRITE

  Love

  Roge

  2 January 1956

  I hereby tender my humblest apologies for not having written yesterday, but it being a holiday and all, I hope you’ll excuse me—besides, from just reading one page after another, it is impossible (unless you put it down and come back to it later) to denote the passage of time.

  Can you tender an apology? Tendering a resignation is proper, but an apology? And is that the proper way to spell tender—or should it be tendre? A dictionary is only a few steps away, but I’ll let you figure it out.

  Since yesterday was New Year’s and Sunday as well, holiday routine was observed by the entire ship—all but the Commissary department, that is—I sat at my little typewriter all day, botching up next week’s menus; a job I’m cultivating a beautiful distaste for.

  Think I’ll use this as sort of a dustpan, picking up some little scraps I’d meant to include in other entries and forgotten. For one thing, there was the public drinking fountain in Pompeii. It looked something like a horse trough—a lion’s head was the main adornment, from which water spouted from its mouth. The marble was worn down into a cup shape on one side of the fountain by countless generations of Pompeiians, as they put their hands there while bending over to drink—one side of the lion’s head was also worn smooth near the mouth, where people’s faces had pressed against it while drinking.

  Also I think I neglected to mention the trip up Mt. Vesuvius, made the same day as the one to Pompeii. After leaving Pompeii, during which the sun shone obligingly, we stopped at one of the little villages between there and Naples for dinner. While we ate, clouds drifted in from somewhere like sliding doors, completely hiding the mountain. As we started to leave the restaurant, Niagara Falls suddenly appeared overhead, and the street became a river, down which floated odds and ends of branches, celery stalks, and torn bits of paper.

  Our guide insisted, with the fervor only Italians have (fortunately) that we couldn’t possibly go up Mt. Vesuvius—that we could see instead Little Vesuvius, an obscure mountain, or hill, that still had a little steaming lava in it. We took a vote, which came out 53 to 2 (the guides) in favor of Vesuvius. We tried pointing out that, if it were raining on big Vesuvius it would most likely be raining on little Vesuvius, too, and we would rather see nothing on the former than on the latter. So, amid a vivid splash of Italian from the guides, we ran to the busses—it was still raining a little—and away we went.

  The rain gave way to fog, which turned into clouds as we got higher. We couldn’t see more than fifty feet in any direction, but could make out the road, which twisted and wound, and was directly above and directly below. At first, near the base, there were many farms, and a small village where the driver stopped for cigarettes. About ten people, mostly men and young boys, stood around in front of the “store” staring at us. One of the younger boys smiled and waved, and was immediately shushed and scolded by one of the older men. From then on till we pulled out they just stared at us and we stared back. I think they were a bunch of dirty Communists. (NOTE: Anyone who doesn’t like Americans is a “dirty Communist.”)

  Higher up the farms grow more scarce, and the road becomes more torturous. Now the lava can be seen—great walls of it—fantastic shapes—looking like cake batter. Small caves appeared where the lava had apparently splashed over the rocks beneath, trapping a bubble of air or gas. Mounds, ridges, bubbles, swirls; all imaginable shapes. I saw a farmhouse, made of stone, with its roof and two walls gone, cut in half by a rivulet of lava.

  Up and up—patches of snow appear; the fog closes in—the bus creeps along, its motor grinding.

  At last the bus comes to a comparatively wide flat area and stops. Snow, or hail, is on the ground, looking like large grains of salt. Hugging the mountain is a yellowish-white building. Our guide tells us that this is as far as the road goes—from the building a chair lift rises to the summit—but of course we don’t want to go up today. We do. On the first floor of the building is a bar, where some of the Chiefs decide to stay. Some of the guys hadn’t brought coats, and now regret it—it’s cold. From the second story, the chair lift starts. It’s a damp cold room, open at one end, which faces a sheer lava wall.

  The chairs seat two—look something like the kiddie swings in public parks. You sit in, and a man pushes the chair, suspended by a single rod to a wire overhead, to a point where it somehow grabs hold of the moving wire—you look like you’re heading straight for the wall. Then, just before you hit it, you’re whisked almost straight up (actually, about at a 45 degree angle). And there you are. The fog—or clouds—act as a huge, damp blanket. There is absolutely no sound, except for the occasional whir as a chair passes going down, or a click as your chair passes one of the supporting towers for the wires, which loom like ghosts out of the mists and disappear as silently as they’d come. Your left side is covered with a sugar-like mist, which clings to your clothes and looks very pretty. Below you, about ten or twenty feet, is the mountain—snow coated ever so lightly—stark, bare, a few parallel tracks that puzzle you—what can they be? No car can go so steep—no skis, certainly. And then the chair whips into a
smaller version of the building below. You get out, walk up a flight of stairs, over a ramp that looks down to the mountain behind the building, and onto the mountain itself.

  It’s a weird, eerie, and beautiful sight—a long, winding line of figures, moving in solid white. On the right, the mountain drops away not sharply, but at such an angle that you’d roll a good distance if you slipped. The wind becomes cold and very violent; the snow is granular like below, only larger. It is mixed with the red of the ash. And then the summit—the mouth of the crater—the only way you can tell is because now the mountain falls away on both sides.

  Large chunks of lava lie scattered about as we weave our way down—as we get below the rim of the crater, the wind no longer blows—it is a misty, silent fantasy. Grey. We go down as far as we can, until the slope ends and all there is is a sheer drop into nothing; the grey above meets the grey below. And you feel proud, awed, and very humble….

  3 January 1956

  At sea again and a beautiful day, as most of our days at sea are. The sky has just enough clouds to make it interesting, and the sun made it the kind of warm one expects of the Mediterranean-—but I’ve been too thoroughly disillusioned to be fooled.

  I would have liked to spend a lot more time “outside,” but we’re so busy in the office I had to dump my wastebaskets and return. Spent most of the afternoon and evening drawing lines on ledger cards—a job even an imbecile would grow bored at. Damn—the ship is shaking so badly I can scarcely write! It gets carried away like that every so often.

  All I’ve been thinking of all day is getting out—I have it all in my mind’s eye; I’ll have less than two months to do when we get back to the States—mom and/or dad will fly out to Norfolk on the 11th, and we’ll leave for home on the 12th, or soon thereafter, taking from three to five days to get there (we drove the 800 miles from Pensacola to Norfolk in three days, traveling only from 10 in the morning till eight at night). I’ll spend all my time buying clothes and getting ready for college; sit in front of the TV set and swap sea stories with Lirf—oh, stop!