Video

https://www.evertoon.com/p/SpimvJ

Another Letter To AA

Dear AA,  

AA I’m really mad at my sponsor. My sponsor is a guy named Fred. Fred is a grateful recovering alcoholic. Fred says every day he spends above ground is a great day. We hang out at a local twelve step club and we are regulars at the 11:00 Friday night hoot owl meeting. I’m sober about six months and I’ve been a little squirrelly lately. Last Wednesday I had a bad day at work. My boss was being a jerk. I went to the 5:00 happy hour meeting at the club and I talked about my bad day and about how my boss hurt my feelings. The meeting topic was spirituality or something like that. I don’t really know about that stuff. I felt better after talking in the meeting about my day and my hurt feelings. But later that night I was freaking out figuring I would probably lose my job and I don’t have much in savings and I have a lot of expenses with my lawyer and court and my car payment and I figured I’d lose my apartment and I wasn’t sure where I would live. I remembered Fred had said to call any time, day or night. So I couldn’t sleep and I was freaking out figuring I would probably end up on the street. So I called Fred at 2:00 am to talk to him. I think he might have been asleep. He sounded kind of tired when he picked up the phone. I told him I was freaking out and I felt this feeling of impending doom and I asked him what it was. He said ” its impending doom asshole. Now go back to bed”. I think Fred was kind of mean, don’t you? What’s with all that when the hand of AA reaches out I want the hand to be there for me stuff ? I take my life really serious and I don’t think Fred should make light of my anxiety. What do you think? 
Signed Steve with impending doom 
Dear Steve, 
The call any time day or night is one of the myths of AA. We don’t really mean it. Well we kind of do. It sounds so good to say it to new people. It’s one of our marketing ploys. It’s kind of like ” one day at a time” or ” the door knob can be you higher power”. It all sounds good but it’s still part of a lure we use to hook new comers. We’re sure Fred is a great guy. He may have even made up a nick name for himself like ” fifth step Fred” or some alliteration of his name. Fred was probably right to administer the tough love to you. Fred may very well be a chain smoking, Red Bull drinking guy that repairs sheet rock for a living. In which case he wouldn’t really be able to talk you off a ledge if you ended up on one. But take it easy Steve and remember what Fred said. Impending doom is impending doom. Relax dude.   
Best regards. 
AA 

Rough draft

Here’s a new piece. It’s unedited so there may be some mistakes.

They spent about two hours unloading at the ship that day. Wanamaker had a tendency to linger when he went to the ships. He seemed to know everyone at the pier and he was always stopping to talk and tell stories along the way. When the work was done and the truck was unloaded the driver was anxious to get back to the warehouse. Wanamaker told him to take the truck back and he and Mike would get a ride back to the office. There was a Norwegian flag tanker tied up alongside the Causeway. Wanamaker told the driver that he wanted to go on board the tanker and talk to them about their order. The driver obliged and he jumped back in the truck and fired up the engine. Mike looked up at the truck as it rumbled away toward the end of the pier. On the side of the door it said “M.L Davies Company, Produce Distributors, 1111 Western Avenue, MAin 2916.

The tanker was part of a fleet that M.L Davies Company and Wanamaker had just started to work with. When he went on board Wanamaker would say he was representing Schou-Gallis Company of San Francisco. Schou-Gallis was a new customer for the Davies/Wanamaker connection. M.L Davies had been referred to Schou by a London firm, JR Wilson Company. Davies and Schou were both west coast agents for JR Wilson. Davies handled the northwest ports and Schou handled all of the Bay Area and Northern California ports. Schou was looking for a company to represent them in the Northwest. They had strong ties to several ship owners in Bergen, Norway. Jr Wilson had suggested that Schou-Gallis contact ML Davies Company to work out a deal. One day the old man received a letter via air mail from Schou-Gallis. It said:

Dear Myron,

We were recently advised by our London agent JR Wilson that you may be interested in representing Schou-Gallis Company in the Northwest. We have many contacts with ship owners in Bergen, Norway and their ships make regular calls in Northwest ports. They have log ships calling in Grays Harbor, Bellingham, Tacoma and Everett. There are also several tankers calling on ports and refineries in your area. As you know we are JR Wilson’s agent here in the bay area. You come highly recommended by Mr. Wilson’s firm. We look forward to doing business with you in the future. Myron, all of the usual commissions and fees would apply to our orders. We look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely,

Rolf Schou

Schou-Gallis Company

San Francisco, California

 

Mr. Davies responded by sending Mr. Schou a message via the Teletypewriter Exchange Service (TWX) which was operated by AT and T Corporation. Using a rotary dial and a keyboard he sent the following message: “Dear Mr. Schou thank you for your letter. We look forward to representing your firm in the future. Regards. ML Davies.”

This message was sent on what amounted to an early version of the internet. TWX messages were sent using a special Bell 10A/B board via a live operator. The system used lines that were separate from the telephone lines. The person sending the message was billed based on the number of keystrokes required to transmit the message. Long words were abbreviated and the language was chopped up into small messages. It was a primitive version of today’s text lingo.

 

A few weeks after Mr. Davies sent the message he received a message from Mr. Schou. It said: “Myron please be advised ship Davenger of Bergen, Norway to come along side at Seattle Smith Cove Pier 91. Tuesday August 7. Please greet ship upon arrival. Regards. Rolf Schou”

 

 

They had a hand shake arrangement. They had an elaborate commission structure set up between the two companies. Schou would notify the ship’s owner in Norway that their representative would meet the ship in Seattle. Wanamaker would go on board the ship and say he was the local agent for Schou-Gallis. The ship’s captain would give Wanamaker the order. Wanamaker would take the order back to M.L Davies Company and they would purchase all of the merchandise. This order would be typed on M.L Davies letterhead. This copy didn’t have prices on it. It would be used by the ship to verify the quantities of merchandise delivered. Davies employees would then re type the entire order with all of the adjusted quantities and added items. This invoice would also include all of the prices. Schou-Gallis would retype the entire order and send an invoice to the ships owners in Norway. The typewriter ribbon company got rich off this arrangement. In order to streamline the operation Schou sent Davies a box of blank invoices with Schou letterhead. Davies would then type the order with the prices on it. Schou would send that invoice to the ship’s owner and pay M.L Davies an amount discounted at ten percent. Wannamaker had to go to the ship and pay every department chief a percentage of the order. This was considered a commission. The captain also received a five percent commission based on the total amount of the order. Windows 95 with Excel was fifty five years away from being launched. Wannamaker and the old man would have to price the entire order using profit wheels. They would have to line up the cost of an item and find the corresponding sell price by reading along the wheel. When they did the pricing they had to consider what an item cost and the figure out how much went to the ship’s crew, the captain, and ultimately they had to factor in Schou-Gallis ten percent. Wannamaker also earned a commission on this business. They generally worked on a forty percent markup. Wanamaker would “pad” the order with extra items and would over weigh the meat items in order to help pay the ships commissions. He would always receive a cable from the ship’s owner reminding him that paying commissions to the crew or captain was strictly prohibited according to company policy.

These orders required an extreme amount of detail work. All of the merchandise had to be sourced from multiple vendors. Wanamaker had to supply the needs of all of the departments on the ship. He had to source products for the engineer, the mate, the steward, the electrician, the boson, and the captain. He not only had to know everything about marine hardware he also had to source food products for cooks and stewards that came from all corners of the world. M.L Davies literally supplied everything from soup to nuts.

All of the invoices and delivery receipts had to be hand typed on manual typewriters. All of the calculations and extensions had to be performed on manual adding machines.

Because all of the numbers were hand typed they had to be verified and checked and double checked. One transposition of one number could cost the company hundreds of dollars. Some of the big orders would have up to three or four hundred line items. All of it had to done by hand.

 

The Norwegian tanker was owned by the Westfal-Larsen Line in Bergen, Norway. The ship was the second S/T Davenger. The first S/T Davenger had been sunk by a German U boat in the Great War. With outbreak of the Second World War the WL Line ships had been granted a safe haven in the United States. WL Line would suffer enormous losses at the hands of the Axis. By wars end they lost twenty two ships out of a fleet that had number thirty six. In 1940 alone they lost five ships and a total, of fifty four crew members were lost at sea. The Varenger, a sister ship to the Davenger was sunk on January 25, 1942 just a few miles off the coast of Atlantic city New Jersey. The Davenger was waiting for orders and would eventually move to a local refinery where she would load fuel to be delivered to Benicia in the San Francisco Bay Area.

These tankers were considered part of the “tramp fleet”. Trampers could be chartered by agents and might be ordered to go anywhere with a load of goods. The Westfal-Larsen fleet had been granted safe haven in the United States. As part of the arrangement Uncle Sam had offered charters to these foreign companies. Some trips were offered with the aid of convoy or United States Naval escort. When a trip was not designated as high risk the ships would travel alone.  The Davenger’s trip to Benicia would be made without the aid of escort or convoy. When they left the Strait of Juan de Fuca they would go into the open ocean and sail without aid to California. 

Under the current conditions the captain’s mood was quite subdued. The disaster at Pearl Harbor was still a year away. Everyone at Westfal-Larsen was very nervous about the world situation. The captain lit up when he saw Mike. He took Mike up the two flights of stairs and let him sit in the captain’s seat on the bridge. Mike took the wheel and for a moment he had visions of himself as the captain of the ship. He made the bang bang sound of a gun and said “take that Hitler you jerk”. Mike dreamed of buying his own tanker so, he could load it with fuel and deliver it to Seattle so they could use it to fill the gas tanks of the ML Davies fleet of trucks. Mike would sail his tanker to Venezuela and load it with crude oil. He’d sail around the world and sell oil to people and make a million dollars. Then he would buy a fleet of tankers and he would be the tanker king of the whole world. Mike would get all of his supplies from Wannamaker. Eventually Mike came out of his daydream. He walked around the bridge and looked in amazement at all of the equipment. The captain told Mike he would make a fine captain one day. He told Mike he would be proud to share the sea lanes with such an able helmsman. The captain told Mike they needed to head back down stairs and check up on Mr. Wannamaker. As the went down the two flights of stairs Mike sang in a soft voice “whistle while you work, Hitler is a jerk. Mussolini bit his weeny now it doesn’t squirt”. 

 

Wanamaker had stayed below in the galley. Wanamaker was finding it more and more difficult to get around on the ships. The stairways on the ships were often steep and narrow. The injury he received battling the Kaiser in the trenches France got  worse as he grew older. He was going over an order with the chief steward. The chief had a full crew of fifty two men on board and they were feeding three meals a day. The departure date of the charter hadn’t been finalized yet so the men were essentially stranded in America and living and eating on the ship. They were receiving a delivery about once a week of fresh provisions to keep the crew fed. Mike told the cook if they wanted live chickens he could help slaughter them. Mike had spent summers with his aunt at a chicken farm in Edmonds. Mike’s aunt Esther stayed there with a guy she called her boyfriend. People would pull up in their cars and point to the chicken they wanted. Esther would collect the money and Mike would chase the desired bird down and capture it. He would deliver the doomed bird to the boyfriend who would proceed to kill it, clean it, and remove all of the feathers. Aunt Esther would sit in the shade and smoke Chesterfield cigarettes and sip on “lemonade”. She and the boyfriend would get pretty hammered and by the late afternoon Mike would have to slaughter the chickens himself. Mike also learned how to drive the old pickup truck with the manual transmission when he was nine. The cook said he would prefer to buy ice packed cleaned chickens as he had nowhere to keep live animals on board the ship. He thanked Mike for the offer. He invited Mike and Wanamaker to stay for lunch. He served up baron of beef with mashed potatoes and gravy. When Mike was done the cook sent him a huge piece of blackberry pie with vanilla ice cream. They were served this lunch in the officer’s dining room and had their own private steward that attended to them. Having Mike there that day helped lift the spirits of the crew of the Davenger. In a few weeks they got their charter and headed off to load bunker fuel at the Anacortes refinery. They returned to Anacortes from Benicia in a few weeks and then headed out for Pearl Harbor. They sailed by escorted convoy and arrived in Hawaii safely. A few months later they were headed for Panama when they received word of the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. Mike spent the war in the youth corps. He would stand watch on Magnolia bluff using his binoculars and try to spot incoming Japanese planes. He often thought of the crew of the Davenger and the time he spent on board that day. He worried about their safety and often thought about what he would do, if he could get his hands on Hitler or Mussolini or the Emperor.

Mike didn’t know it yet but he was the heir apparent to take over the ship chandlery from Wannamaker.

Aortagram

As the gurney rolled down the long hallway toward the procedure room Mike noticed one of Kenny’s socks had fallen off and on to the floor. Mike reached down and picked it up and walked toward the cart and carefully tucked it under the blanket that was covering his son. When Mike walked back to where his ex wife Joanne was standing she saw a tear in his eye. He tried to hide it but it was there and when it became too big it spilled over and rolled down his cheek. He wiped it off and the parents of this young man went to the coffee shop to grab a cup and wait for the procedure to be over.
Kenny had suffered from a whooping cough his whole life. He was seventeen now and had come to see his pediatrician, Doctor Donald Sutherland of the Bellevue Clinic. Doctor Sutherland was going to refer Kenny to one of the doctors that treated adults but he had a funny feeling about this case. He looked over Kenny’s chart and saw a long consistent pattern of whopping cough. Kenny coughed in the summer, he coughed in the winter and the spring and the fall. Doctor Sutherland was very thorough and cared deeply about his patients. He consulted with another doctor from the University of Washington. The two men did some research and discovered that there were cases like Kenny’s where patients had suffered from an incurable whooping cough. The cause of this condition was a birth defect which concerned the position of the windpipe in relation to the aorta. It was a very rare condition. It didn’t have a name. It didn’t have a telethon or a celebrity spokesperson. The only way to determine if a patient had this condition was to perform a procedure called an aorta gram. In 1975 an Aortagram consisted of wheeling a patient into an operating room sticking a giant needle in the inside of his thigh, up high, right next to you know what. Then injecting dye into his body and taking ex rays of his chest. This procedure lasted about two hours and by the end the patient had to stay overnight in the hospital because he couldn’t walk. Every time they injected the dye his entire body heated up to the boiling point and then the sensation of heat would slowly escape through his feet.

A few days later Mike, Joanne, Kenny and Doctor Sutherland met at a cardiologists office. When the family members walked in to the exam room Doctor Sutherland and the cardiologist Doctor Anderson were waiting for them. Doctor Anderson looked at them and said ” where is Kenneth Davies”? Joanne looked puzzled and pointed at Kenny. Doctor Anderson looked puzzled and said he expected Kenneth Davies to be sick and skinny. At this point Kenneth Davies was five foot ten and three quarters and tipped in at about two hundred and four pounds. Doctor Anderson walked over to a wall and  turned on a light and started putting slides of the ex rays from the Aortagram up. He and Doctor Sutherland explained to the trio that Kenny indeed had an abnormally formed aorta. The aorta was wrapped around the wind pipe. This caused the whopping cough. Mike and Joanne were completely shocked. They couldn’t hide the terror they were feeling. Doctor Sutherland explained that the only way to fix the condition was by performing an operation. Joanne looked at him and said ” well it’s a routine procedure isn’t it “? Doctor Sutherland and Doctor Anderson looked very grim at this point of the meeting. Doctor Sutherland explained that it would require open heart surgery to repair the aorta. He explained the chest would have to be cut open and the heart put on a by pass. Then they would have to cut the aorta and untangle it from the windpipe. Then they would have to re connect the aorta and re start the heart. The survivability for a healthy seventeen year old in 1975 for this operation was around seventy percent. That was the number for surviving the operation. Not to mention complications in the recovery process. Mike sat down in a chair. Joanne shook her head and looked like she had just seen a ghost. The air in the room was very thick. Doctor Anderson looked at Kenny and he said ” you look like a very healthy young man”. He went on to explain he had expected this Kenneth Davies to be a very unhealthy looking child. He further explained he wouldn’t recommend the operation at this point. He agreed with Doctor Sutherland that the whooping cough would never go away. Doctor Anderson was tall, around six foot two or three. He looked at Kenny and he pointed his finger at him and he said ” don’t ever smoke anything son, not even grass”.

Mike was in shock and sat in the chair wondering, feeling regret, feeling remorse. He was wondering what he could have done more of less of during his life. He thought about his son lying on that operating table undergoing open heart surgery. Mike wondered what life would be like if Kenny were to perish during the operation. Mike tried to imagine what the world would be like without his son. He felt that tear start to form in his eye again. He dabbed away at it and tried to think of happier days and happier times that lay ahead.