Tag Archives: Camp Pendleton

America, Cars, Ford Mustang

Cops and Me

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Cops surround me even at breakfast.

Cops love me, I tell ya.  We have a special relationship.

Cops and me have met on official business while on the road.

Three times between 2008 and 2010.

But I have not seen the inside of a police car, paddy wagon or jail.

Don’t you wonder why?  I had three chances to do so in two years.

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Leaving Cars and Coffee, Irvine, CA, 2008.  How is it cops can spot my car from a mile away?

During the first two-plus years after customizing my car, I was lit up by CHP, police and sheriff black and whites.

Just once for each law enforcement branch to be modest.

The first time was on my way back from a Ford Mustang car show in San Diego.  Heading north back to LA and after passing Camp Pendleton – home of the US Marines’ famed 1st Division – I noticed a CHP motorbike merging onto the freeway in my rear view mirror

I am very good at spotting CHP, you know.  Especially since the CHP – for some silly reason – is attracted by bright orange¹ Mustangs without mufflers.

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See… Cops love me. A lot of them. On my way to have Jack Roush of NASCAR fame sign my dashboard.

Traffic was heavy heading away from historic Camp Pendleton being a Saturday evening; the entire 1st Division must have just been issued liberty.  I was pretty much boxed in on the highway.  Going with the flow, you know.  There were SUVs and passenger cars all around me, most with tinted windows which are illegal here in California.  I remember one SUV with limo tint.

But sure enough, before Las Pulgas Road and the border check point, the motorcycle cop lit me up.  Hmmm.  I wonder why?  Could it be because my car is orange with racing stripes?  Nah.

So I pulled over, rolled down my tinted windows, put my left arm and hand out my driver’s side window, with my right hand on the top of the steering wheel.  Common sense given the car.

The CHP officer carefully walked up to my passenger window and peered in.  He walked to the front then came back.  “You were speeding back there, have tinted windows and no front license plate.  Driver’s license, registration and insurance, please.”

Speeding?  No problem.  I wasn’t going to bicker with him about the speeding since we were all going at XX mph.  I told him I need to get into my console to which he nodded his head.  He looked at my driver’s license.  He pulled down his sun glasses.  I could see he was MUCH younger than I.  He then looked up from my license, stared at me, then stared back at my license.  He looked into my back seat area, hoping to see if anyone else was back there like a 16 year old son.  “Is this YOUR car, sir?”

I yelled over the traffic noise, “Yes, sir… and I bet I’ve been driving longer than you’ve been alive.”   He smiled.

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Me doing my Lightning McQueen thing.

He walked back to his bike and I’m sure he checked for wants and warrants.  No big deal.  I would want him to do that on every stop. I want to protect my kids, you know.

He came back and handed me a “fix it” ticket while saying, “I’m letting you off on the speeding but you have 60 days to get these violations fixed.”  I now had to officially get my window tint removed and front license plate installed on my then show-quality car, then have an officer sign it off.

“Ok, sir.  Thank you… but you never answered my question if I’ve been driving longer than you’ve been alive.”

He grinned, patted my passenger door’s window sill and said, “Have a good day, sir,” while smiling and walked back to his bike.²

Gee.  I didn’t get tackled to the ground, handcuffed or guns drawn on me.  I wonder why?  Instead, he just smiled.

And I am glad he didn’t ask me to pop the hood…  That’s a whole different type of fix it ticket under there.  It would have been a gold mine for the CHP money bucket.

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Assembling for a cruise to Blackbird Airpark. Now you gotta ask: If all these supercharged Mustangs were going 85 mph and you were a cop, who would you single out?

Another time was at lunch.  I can’t exactly say for sure but perhaps I was speeding just a teensy-weensy bit.  Anyways, a Fullerton PD black and white lit me up.

Same routine.  Pulled over, rolled down my tinted windows and put my hands where he could see them.  He did say he had seen the car driving around before and that he was going to let me go on the window tint, the missing plate and a VERY loud car…this time.  But I do think he recognized the “Voss Performance” stickers all over my car.  Voss knows a lot of cops around there, thankfully.

The other time, the same routine and results, thankfully.  I think the LA County Sheriff felt sorry this nice car was being driven by a decrepit old man in a higher crime area.
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But each time, I did not make mainstream mis-media.  You know, CNN and the like.

I followed the officer’s orders.  Plain and simple.

Nobody came out to say I was being discriminated against because I got picked out of a dozen cars going the same speed, some with a LOT darker tint than mine.  What if I were of a different race and I went after the cop?  Is it because the cop is a racist?

And please don’t say it was just a traffic stop. It’s the same if a cop approached me on a street corner. I interacted with a cop.

But one thought I do have.  Slavery was abolished more than 150 years ago.  There’s nobody alive today from that time – well, at least not since George Burns passed away.  Yet, they still speak to it in volumes in our children’s US history books.  But don’t you find it curious they pretty much overlook WWII which was only 70 years ago?

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My 13 year old son’s US History textbook.  There are pages and pages about discrimination in our children’s textbooks and that it hasn’t improved much. To me, this becomes one overriding concept taken away from school by our children.
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More focus on discrimination. What are the children learning about our nation’s greatness? Can this be a cause for certain people the world is owed them?  Are they thinking America is BAD?
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There were only about four+ pages on WWII with a lot of side bars. There was no true learning about individual sacrifices as a nation to become victorious but ask the children to instead think about discrimination against minorities.

And if any one “race” has a reason to scream discrimination, it would be my father’s generation about 75 years ago.  People of Japanese descent in the “West Coast Exclusion Zone” had all their citizenship and rights stripped away and worldly possessions taken.  I don’t recall any other “race” en masse having their citizenship taken away by the stroke of a President’s pen and put behind barbed wire.

I do feel one thing.  All this poppy-cock about it being solely the cops that caused the riots in Ferguson, Baltimore and unrest in Philadelphia.  It was WRONG for anyone to have NOT complied with the officer’s orders in the first place.  Simple as that.  Why resist arrest or fight a cop?

If someone doesn’t have drugs, weapons or outstanding warrants on their person, complying would be the end of it… like with me.  The only crime I committed was being old.  Well, I guess the tint, no license plate, no mufflers and supposed speeding, too.

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Hmmm.  Do you think I burned rubber while leaving?  Pretty tempting with 505 hp.

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Why isn’t attention being focused on why these so called race incidents occurred in the first place?  Some jerk did not comply with an officer’s orders.  Plain and simple.

Has NOT complying become accepted as an appropriate behavior for thugs when stopped by law enforcement officers… and then for it to be pretty much overlooked if something happens just because of their race?  That a cop can be assaulted and to say afterwards its part of their job to be a glutton for punishment and not have the right to protect himself/herself?  If they fight a cop, what would they do to YOU?

No, I am not condoning someone dying for whatever reason.  But we have to stop overlooking the perpetrators themselves and then using their upbringing as the excuse for their behavior… and make them – and their parents – be accountable for their own actions.  We need to stop giving them hall passes in every way, shape and form.  In essence, we have to stop making ANY race feel special just because of their race.  I blame the DOJ, too, for not placing any blame on the “victims”.

If we don’t, this spiral will never end.

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Notes:

1.  It is orange.  Not yellow!

2. By the way, there are no more “fix it” tickets here in California.  You are cited for tint, no plates or whatever else with no chance to appeal.  Each type of infraction, I believe, is about $160.

第二次世界大戦, Friends, Hiroshima, Japan, Marines, Military, Navy, World War II

Mr. Johnson, USMC – Part IV

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Just two months after Old Man Jack passed away, so did the young boy who stood in the US Marine Corps Recruiting Station in Louisiana in 1942.

The man who told me funerals don’t do a damn for him anymore.

Mr. Johnson was gone.

The cremated remains of Mr. Johnson

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The neighborhood was in shock.  I had waved to Mr. Johnson just three days earlier while he and Marge gingerly got out of their car.  I said in a louder than normal voice from across the street: “We’re still on for breakfast on Saturday, right Mr. Johnson?”  We were to go have breakfast and chat about Old Man Jack – and perhaps learn more of Mr. Johnson.  Instead, he died suddenly just three days later.  Three days.

After 66-1/2 years of marriage, Marge was now a widow.  A sudden illness took his last breath away when bombs could not 70 years earlier.  He was 89 years old.

Marge surprised me when she asked if I would video Mr. Johnson’s funeral.  I told her it would be my privilege.  I was elated to be of some service to her.

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After Old Man Jack’s funeral, Mr. Johnson invited me over after I got home from work that night.  That was when he volunteered that story about how “he got suckered into becoming a Marine”.  Lovingly, of course.  You could tell he had esprit de corps in his blood to that day.  He was proud of not having BEEN a Marine, but of BEING a Marine.  He had all the right to be.

He also talked about how he met Marge.  What a wonderful story it was.  I will try to capture the essence of what he told me.

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By early 1944, Mr. Johnson (now a sergeant) had been taken off the front lines to recover from his grave wounds.  He was “pretty messed up,” as he put it.  Didn’t say much more.  He was put in charge of the motor pool at Camp Pendleton during convalescence.

The base commander’s wife, a proper lady, he said, had come to the motor pool to get her car fixed up.  Mr. Johnson said it was a beat up Chevy especially on the inside but it was better than most for those times.

After she commented on the car’s condition, Mr. Johnson said he’ll do his best to make it more presentable.

He had come to know an upholsterer in Oceanside so Mr. Johnson arranged for the interior to get tidied up some.  He also had it painted.  She was elated.

I wish I had jotted down the commander’s name.  Darn.

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Sometime towards the latter part of ’44, he said, there was some scuttlebutt about a big operation that was brewing.

But then, the base commander called Mr. Johnson into his office.

“Johnnie,” he said, looking through his file, “you’re pretty used up.  I’m sending you to rehabilitation.”

So off he went.  While Mr. Johnson used “a hospital out in San Bernardino” as a description, the hospital was likely somewhere near the mountains because he mentioned Lake Arrowhead.

As I write this, there is a good probability it was Naval Hospital, Norco, as it was officially called back then.

Naval Hospital, Corona

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During rehabilitation, he ventured to a USO dance being held at the hospital.  The USO was such a morale booster for these young men.  Mr. Johnson was no exception.

There, against the wall, he said, was this pretty young thing.  It was Marge.  She was studying to become a nurse…which she did.

…and if I understood him correctly, they got married the day after he got discharged from the Corps in 1945.  It sounded like if Marge just didn’t want a husband that would go off to war, let alone as a Marine.  She got her way, of course:

Marge and Mr. Johnson on their wedding day in 1945.

Don’t you think they are a gorgeous couple?  A gift of chance… and war.

(As a historical note, the “scuttlebutt” ended up to be… Iwo Jima.  Part of the 3rd Marine Division, Mr. Johnson said that in a way, he was glad he didn’t go…  Not that he DIDN’T want to go but because of what the Marines horribly found out after the first waves landed ashore.  He learned from the Marines that made it back that all vehicles that went ashore in the first couple of days were sitting ducks for enemy artillery.  This was made worse by all the volcanic ash being spewed up by the artillery rounds, just choking off the engines just minutes later because it would clog up the air filters.  Some of boys were burned alive, he was told, after their vehicles got hit…in the same vehicles he was in charge of at Camp Pendleton.)

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One reason why I was never able to find any military record on Mr. Johnson became obvious on his funeral day; that’s when I – and the other neighbors – found out his name wasn’t Johnnie, but Doreston.

“Doreston”

I was partially successful in videotaping Mr. Johnson’s funeral.  It wasn’t as smooth as I wanted it to be for Marge’s sake.  There was a bit of disorganization and miscommunication, too.  Many of us following the hearse were just waiting in our cars wondering what to do next…when I saw the Marine burial detail getting ready to escort Mr. Johnson’s urn to a covered area.  Time for a mad dash.

A couple of notes about the video below if you wish to watch…

  1. I’m not much an editor but I managed to insert the “Marine’s Hymm” from my all-time Marine Corps classic, “Sands of Iwo Jima”.  Gives me goose bumps every time.  It starts a bit after the 1:00 mark.
  2. There is some footage at the National Medal of Honor Memorial; Mr. Johnson would be interred just yards away.  Sgt. Hartsock is my friend’s first husband who was posthumously bestowed the Medal of Honor.  You will also see the names of some of the 22 Nisei’s who were also bestowed the Medal of Honor during WWII.
  3. The bugler you see is a long-time friend of Mr. Johnson.  I understand he is also in his 80’s and volunteers his services everyday.  A very fitting and personal tribute.
  4. This was also the first 21-gun salute I was ever able to have the honor to witness in person.  I am glad it was for Mr. Johnson:

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During this time, and now armed with his true first name, I was pretty determined to uncover some of his unspoken valor during the Solomon Islands Campaign and the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands…and I was partially successful.

These are two pages from CINCPAC’s official, confidential after battle report.  They were called “War Diaries” and are daily operational journals created by various naval commands throughout the Navy during WWII (The Marine Corps is an arm of the US Navy).  I was only able to find this single battle report for the Solomon Islands Campaign:

War Diary, Cover Page
Specific page recognizing Mr. Johnson’s valor under fire.

I do NOT know for sure if Mr. Johnson fought on the islands but Old Man Jack never mentioned anything except him serving on the Big E…

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As for Mr. Johnson’s wounds, Old Man Jack muttered once “Johnnie was hit twice.  The last time was pretty bad.”  He didn’t say more.

But Mr. Johnson collapsed at his house in 2011.  Marge called me over to help while waiting for the ambulance.  Mr. Johnson was on his side, left hand gripping the bed sheets and right arm pinned in under his body.  He was too big for me to lift him off the floor by myself.  So I yelled, “C’mon, Marine!  Get your sorry ass off this floor!”  Seriously.  With that, he grunted, grabbed the bed sheets one more time, and together, we got his upper body onto his bed…

But in the process, I saw his chest.

His first fall in the house. Marge’s shadow is the one on the left. My little house can be seen beyond the ambulance’s cab. (Edit)

My god.

The scars.

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Tears of Remembrance and Closing

Two days after the funeral, I had finished putting the video together for Marge.  We watched it together on my laptop as she didn’t have a DVD player that worked.  Dry eyes had to take a back seat.  She was so grateful.

But she called me at work a couple of days later.  She asked if I could stop by after work again…and show her the video one more time.  I was so surprised by her request…but so happy.  She must have liked it.

When I played it for her – and when the “Marine’s Hymm” from the John Wayne iconic classic “Sands of Iwo Jima” began playing, her left hand began to rhythmically and softly beat to the theme song… ever so softly. Then her head bobbed along with the beat. That broke me.

Tears of Remembrance – Marge, now a widow after 66-1/2 years of marriage

She asked me again to explain the page from the Solomon Islands Battle Report which clearly states how he valiantly fought and incurred his wounds… Then when the 21-gun salute played on the screen, that was it…   She broke down.  I cannot imagine how large those floodgates may have been for her emotionally.

She thanked me immensely…

But it was so humbling as it was me who wanted to thank her and her husband… the same young boy in that Louisiana recruiting station who did what he had to do… and had enough humanity left in him to forgive.

The Greatest Generation…  May they go in peace.