Ron retired from Jackson High School in 2002 after 31 years and is currently an instructor at Stark State College and Kent State University. He and his wife Laura have two married children who reside in Ashland, Ohio and Chicago, Illinois. He was in the U.S. Navy from 1963 to 1967 where in 1965 he spent nine months in Viet Nam.
McSorley’s Thoughts
2009 winnerThis voyage had not gone as well as he had hoped. He had been in storms on the lake before, but none had been as violent as the one he was in now. Eighty mile per hour winds shrieked through the ship’s rigging, and the seas were breaking at fifteen feet. The spray from their white caps slammed into the windows of the pilot house faster than the wipers could keep up.
“Probably should have stayed in port,” he thought.
But, he had been Master of this ship for quite some time, and he thought that this last run in November with a load of 26 tons of taconite pellets would be a nice bonus at the end of the year. He looked aft and saw that the entire spar deck between the wheelhouse and the deckhouse was under water. He wondered about his crew, that was sheltered there, and how they were weathering the storm. They were 500 feet from him, but they may as well been a mile. He mumbled a short prayer for them. As he watched, his ship struggled out of the boiling seas, and water cascaded down her sides like Niagara Falls. He silently cheered her, but not for long as another set of driving waves buried her again.
“Come on, baby you can do it.” And she did. But he noted that she didn’t rise as high as before.
He turned back into the wheelhouse and glanced at the clock. 7:08 P.M. He walked over to the radar and stared at the green static on the screen. The wind had ripped the antennas from their masts about an hour ago, and he remembered how lonely and isolated he had felt. He had radio contact with another ship, Arthur M Anderson, and that human voice from it had given him some hope, but he remembered how tinny and distant it sounded, like the words had come from eternity. He looked at the clock. 7:10 P.M.
He thought of his wife and of all the times they had been apart because of his call to be at sea. Lost times. He remembered their last departure. He smelled her perfume. He felt her warmth and her soft touch. It had never occurred to him that that was to have been his final contact with her. Had his last words to her been the right ones? He looked at the clock again. 7:12 P.M.
He walked to the aft part of the wheelhouse and looked back at the angry seas. The warm thoughts of home were quickly replaced by cold terror at what he saw. At a distance of about a quarter mile a large wave of about thirty feet had risen up and rolled toward his ship. He was mesmerized. “Sound the alarm!” his brain had screamed, but he was frozen in his spot. He watched as the wave lifted the stern of his ship clear of the water and the bow began to dip. He remembered his early training as a cadet and all of the other ships and storms that he had been a part of as the wave charged forward with a purpose. He felt the ship shudder. He heard a cracking sound and felt the rumbling of the pellets as they rushed toward the bow. None of his previous experiences had prepared him for what he saw. He felt a cold weight in his stomach and a heavy sadness in his heart because what he saw was his end.
He grabbed hold of hand rail to keep himself erect as he faced the bow of his ship and looked into the snarling mouth of the lake. He watched the bow nose dive into it. The bow pole snapped, and for some reason he was fascinated by that sight. Then he felt a sense of calm because, now, he didn’t have to decide anything. He took a last look at the clock. It was 7:15 P.M.
The wheelhouse windows exploded, and he was showered with glass as the wind and water roared in. The cold weight and heavy sadness left, and resignation had taken their places. He raised his chin defiantly and waited. The water slammed into him like a thousand needles and drove his breath away. He shuddered. “Damn that’s cold,” he thought. But the screaming wind and crashing seas were quickly replaced with complete silence as his boat slid under. He watched the color of the water change from light to a dark void as his ship was pulled deeper into the lake’s embrace, and he felt a heavy pressure on his chest.
He felt the bow impact the bottom of Lake Superior. A cloud of gray mud was thrown up and began to settle back onto his ship. He felt relieved. The ordeal was over. He was still aboard his ship, the S.S. Edmund Fitzgerald, and he was still serving with his crew, the men that he loved. He knew that he was where he ought to be, and he was O.K. with that.
What For?
2009 winnerHe took a deep drag from the cigarette that he had found on the sidewalk an hour ago and let the smoke swirl around his lungs and through his nose. Underneath all of the flavors the cigarette had there was a faint taste of tobacco. He concentrated on that taste and remembered the times when he could buy his own brand anytime that he wanted. He wished he could do that now because he always thought of himself as sort of a Marlboro Man, but right now he wasn’t sure who he was. The smoke made him thirsty, so he peeled back the paper bag from his bottle of Wild Turkey and took a long pull. His eyes watered, and he coughed heavily and threw up some phlegm. Ah yes, there was a time when he enjoyed walking into an elegant bar and ordering a Johnny Walker, Red, on the rocks, or maybe even a Crown Royal. He recalled last week when he had found a bottle of Jack Daniels in a dumpster that still had a shot in it. He had chugged it. The whiskey had burned all the way to the bottom of his stomach, but, oh what bliss he had felt. Those Kentuckians sure knew how to make a good whiskey.
He coughed again and dragged the left sleeve of his tattered field jacked across his nose and glanced at the faded shoulder patch that was still there. It was the patch of the 1st Infantry Division. He smiled. He remembered being assigned to the 1st after basic. Top dogs. That’s what they were. The best of the best, they were told. He had been proud, and his prided caused him to work hard, and he had risen to the rank of sergeant before they shipped him off to Viet Nam. He had his own squad then. Guys that he had helped train. Guys that he loved like brothers. Guys that were serving their country because they wanted to. No damn draftees in his squad. No, sir!
Then came the ambush at Loc Ninh. The VC had risen out of the ground like a heavy fog and killed his brothers. He had tried to save them. But, he had failed and wound up on a Huey dust off bound for a Saigon hospital.
After Saigon, he had thirty days leave coming. He had felt proud when he had returned to the real world and strutted down the concourse at LAX in his uniform that displayed his service ribbons along with a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star. He had felt proud until a long-haired hippie spit on his ribbons. Then, he was pissed. He pummeled the long hair five or six times before security pulled him off and locked him in a room until the MP’s from Fort Ord came and took him away. He spent his thirty days confined to the base, and then he was discharged. They gave him travel money and told him to go home. There was no “Thank You” when he left and there was no “Welcome Home” when he got there.
He had tried looking for a job, but Loc Ninh had not only cost him his brothers, but his right hand as well. Nobody wanted a cripple. He even tried college. He was ignored by most of his classmates and labeled a baby killer by his liberal professors. Nobody wanted to hang out with a murderer, he was told. What was wrong with them? What had he done? He had tried. He had given his best. He had done what was asked of him.
Just yesterday he had asked a suit for a couple of bucks for a cup of coffee, and the man just looked at him in disgust. “Get a job,” the man had replied caustically. He felt like the hippie had spit on him again.
He took another sip from his bottle and looked out onto the street and saw people hurrying and scurrying about. But, what did they really see, and what did they really feel? People had ignored his tin cup that was asking for some loose change, and at one time he considered trying to become one of them again. Then he thought “What for?” So, he flicked the ask from his cigarette and put it into his jacket pocket, to be finished later, crawled back into his cardboard box, pulled his musty blanket over his head and disappeared from the rest of the world.