Author's note: Several months before Trader had his stroke I was back in Pensacola, and hoping to get some comments on the story that follows, I dropped by the bar to show him a copy. He looked at the top sheet, thanked me sincerely, and without reading any further, walked down to the end of the counter, put the package in a safe place underneath and patted it a couple of times. Then he came back and we went on talking about something else. A month or two later I received an envelope in the mail with " TJ - Trader Jon" up in the corner - no other return address - and a handwritten note thanking me for what he called my " . . . beautiful letter." He asked for ideas for his Blue Angel Museum (still under construction at the time), ran down a list of upcoming events he was involved with, and lastly - promoter as always - asked if I could ". . . please donate something to TJ's." I did, a squadron plaque. My modest donation served its purpose at the time, but shortly thereafter life took a turn for the worse for Trader, and the Weissman family now needs to sell the bar to pay for his medical care. You can read about the situation on this website. If Trader Jon's holds a special place in your heart, perhaps you'll consider making a donation of your own today to help preserve it - not just for those of us who've come and gone in the past - but as a legacy for future generations of our naval aviation heritage. - R.F. O'C. 12-15-98
The quest began innocently enough when we couldn't find Batt Four. I knew where it stood in relation to some other landmarks, but too many of those were gone and the ones that remained seemed to have moved. We were at Mainside, Pensacola on a beautiful fall day and Gary and I were trying to recapture our youth.
We weren't doing too well. The two old wooden barracks that housed cadet Battalions Two and Four were long gone, but the formal Georgian brick facades of Battalions One and Three, the academic building and the chow hall all looked the same. At least from the outside. I didn't have any desire to go in anywhere, even if I could. Too many memories stood in the way. That and the McDonalds over on the sea wall just down from INDOC.
I remember running on that broad concrete wall on a late fall day in 1961 shortly after reporting in: head shaved, wearing stiff new leather boondockers and a shapeless olive drab poopy suit, driven by a gravel-voiced Marine drill sergeant, and in company with what seemed at the time like a group of all-conference running backs - every one of us scheming feverishly how to wolf down more than two bites of food if we lived long enough to make another impossibly quick visit to that chow hall. Civilian life lay across the bay, its blue waters alive with sailboats, and out on Santa Rosa Island, with pelicans wheeling lazily in formation and girls sunning on the white sand beach. On the sea wall where we ran there was only isolation, sweat, fear, confusion and the growing, painful realization that we weren't going back to that carefree life again any time soon. Our world had changed abruptly and it would never be the same.
Pensacola Bay is prettier than ever now, but other images weren't matching up. The parade ground where we graduated is still flat and green and the swim tank down past the sea wall looks just the same, but what happened to the grinder, the O-course and the ACRAC? Familiar faces and names - odd how I remembered so many of their initials - came flooding through my mind. Where were all the hopeful spirits who ran beside me on that seawall now?
The heavy odor of french fries, soured by an acrid discharge from the paper mill up in Cantonement and a long line of tourists in the drive-thru were enough to keep us moving.
Saufley Field, where we learned to fly, was worse. A heavy crop of weeds growing in the runway touchdown zone, visible over the fence as we approached the main gate, produced that sinking feeling again. Activity on the base now is strictly administrative -coordinating various training efforts, performing some accounting services and overseeing a small, minimum security prison. We were losing ground here.
Thirsting for a way to set our memories to rest, we made our way downtown. A few stretches looked familiar, but not enough. Navy Boulevard to Barrancas, over the drawbridge, swing right, Garden to Palafox, looking up to the left toward a parking lot that should have been the San Carlos Hotel; turn right, through a renovated, New Orleans - style section, past the little park, down another block or two and we found the bar.
It wasn't quite noon on a weekday and the place seemed deserted. A narrow rectangular bar ran out into the room toward the entrance. The only light came from a door that lay open to the outside, well behind and to the right. The pervasive, co-mingled sour sweet smell of beer and smoke hung trapped in the room like a haze.
Hundreds of photos, with squadron plaques and patches filling the gaps between them, covered every inch of space on the raw brick walls and clambered over each other up several columns. Above the bar flags covered the ceiling and below them hung dozens of outsized wooden airplanes, some with wingspans of four feet or more. The place had the cluttered look of an old attic. It felt like home.
Something about it was different, though (I thought I remembered a wooden indian in there somewhere). It may have been the photos. Some were group shots, some formal portraits, new faces and names, women in flight gear; but the inscriptions were all similar: "To Trader, when I grow up I want to be just like you . . . ." "To Trader, thanks for the support. . . ." And mostly, just "To Trader, thanks for all the memories."
A figure appeared in the corner of my eye and moved quickly behind the bar. When he moved, he shuffled a bit, working up speed, then he was off in an energetic, rolling half hitch, quick and noiseless, like a cat. Balding, with just a fringe of hair, a long face and a prominent nose, he wore a nondescript white t-shirt, baggy tan shorts and sandals. His face held a self-effacing look and, at the same time, an artful grin.
"You open ?" I asked.
A short pause.
"Sure," he said. He looked quizzically from one to the other of us, nodded, and disappeared as quietly as he'd entered.
We wandered separately, looking for familiar names and faces. I found some of both: a squadron mate who had made admiral; names that had signed my official orders; names from ready room stories - recounted, embellished and passed down the line as legend. The faces were all different, but they shared an indefinable quality - something like family.
On the far side of the bar a table and chairs were wedged in the corner behind a pole and two barber chairs stood in trail with a ragged parade of barstools - no one of which matched any other. To the rear of the bar was an out-sized wooden enclosure covered with more photos - you had to look carefully to pick out the men's room sign above a perfectly camouflaged door. Another opening led into the back, where the cat had disappeared. To the right of it was an area framed in fading college pennants that served as a bandstand. Facing the bandstand on the other side of a half wall that divided it from the bar were some tables and chairs, four pool tables and a handful of pinball machines.
I felt a presence behind me, inside the bar.
"Can we get a beer?" Gary had spotted him from across the room before I did.
Our host nodded, drew two drafts and set them out as Gary came around to stand beside me. He looked us over closely as we both took long, thirsty swallows. Then he leaned across the bar.
"How long has it been?" he asked without preamble, his tone confidential.
Gary and I looked at each other. The question took a moment to sink in, but we both knew what he meant. The cat had a good eye for pilgrims.
I remembered - who I was with and even why we stopped in that night. Bless me, father.
"The last time I was here was in 1963," I began, then trailed off, the weight of so many passing years gradually settling in around me. Faces from the sea wall - and from later on appeared and disappeared. Both war and peace had taken their toll.
"The place looks different, you rearranged it," Gary said, shifting the subject.
The cat grinned. "Never stop," he said proudly, celebrating an obsession. When he spoke his face seemed to light with enthusiasm; when he finished he fixed an expectant gaze on one, then the other of us and waited patiently for a response.
"You've been here for a while, haven't you?" I asked, avoiding the faces and memories that kept crowding in. The cat nodded. "
Since when?"
"1953," he said, quiet again, smiling now to himself.
I did some quick arithmetic and figured there had to be a little more to the story.
"Where were you before that?"
He shrugged his shoulders, chuckled slightly, and looked to the side.
"Oh, Key West for a while." He offered nothing more on the subject, and it was apparent that was as much as we were going to get. This was his bar and you played by his rules.
Gary wandered off quietly. I finished my beer and turned back toward the wall. The cat never moved.
"What did you bring me ?" he asked before I could edge away; conspiratorial again, the bemused half smile back in place when I turned to face him.
Another moment of confusion. I stepped back, with mixed feelings of embarrassment and regret, and looked around me at the relics accumulated from so many lifetimes. I still had a couple of squadron decals squirreled away somewhere gathering dust, and I hadn't seen one on these walls as yet.
"Oh, ah. . . nothing. . . didn't plan to be here today. . . just in the area visiting an old friend . . . ." I gestured needlessly toward Gary, who was lost in his own thoughts halfway across the room.
No recriminations, no petitions.
"Next time you'll bring me something," he said quietly. It was a statement, not a request; penance with absolution. I accepted it as offered.
"I will."
Looking satisfied, the cat nodded, turned, shuffle-hitched his way to the end of the bar, paused for a moment, and once again disappeared.
We wandered around for a while. Now and then two carpenters passed into and out of the room, having done no work that either of us could see. No other customers came in. We had the place to ourselves. It was quiet, a time for reflection, and I was happy to draw out the moment.
At one time or another during the last four decades, how many other brown-shoe novices had stood where I was standing? Serious or amorous, drunk or sober, playful, irreverent, sad, angry, punctuating some recent accomplishment or consoling a friend over a down. Friday nights we celebrated freedom together, Sundays we checked in after the beach.
Everyone who went through the program over all those years took something of it, and probably this place, with them - something intangible but indelible; and whether they wanted to or not, most, like Gary and I, probably left a part of themselves behind. Not a place to hurry through.
There were a few gaps on the side of the half wall where the tables stood, so I was making a little better progress trying to find our squadron plaque when the cat shuffled back into view.
"You boys might like to see my new addition," he said, brandishing a set of keys. It wasn't an invitation, just another statement of fact.
He led us toward the middle of the wall farthest from the bar, the one with a huge plaster bas-relief of a leering satyr in zealous pursuit of several Grecian nymphs. The rest of the wall was partially covered with photos and plaques, but the outline of a door gradually emerged as we approached. The cat paused as he turned the key.
"This is my Blue Angel Museum," he said, pushing the door open and waving us in. The lights were bright inside, in stark contrast to the room we'd just left. A wide, square bar sat in the center with more outsized airplanes hanging from the overhead. Surrounding the bar and lining the whitewashed walls on three sides of the room were hundreds of photographs, newspaper articles, half a dozen sky blue flight suits, airplane models and memorabilia from every Blue Angels Team that's ever flown.
"We're not done yet," the cat said quietly, slowly surveying his memorial, "but this is going to last long after I'm gone." The half smile was still there but he was glowing inwardly now, radiating a quiet satisfaction.
"It's . . . incredible." Lame comment. It was a labor of love so deep and so clear that it was startling. I couldn't find the right words; neither, I guess, could Gary. But the cat didn't seem to mind. The looks on our faces probably said it all.
Another pilgrim wandered through the open door just then, and the cat padded over to size him up.
Gary and I began to work our way around the room slowly, reminiscing and comparing notes. My first sight of the Blues came on a hot summer afternoon at NAS South Weymouth. They were flying F-11 Tigers, and before that afternoon ended, I was hooked.
The journey that began for me that day led to good friends, lasting accomplishments, many great joys and some occasional sorrows, and I've never regretted a minute of it. What fine company to have kept.
Museum was a misnomer. The cat had fashioned a shrine - to the Blue Angels, clearly; to himself, quite possibly; and without question - in my mind anyway - to all the cadet classes and flight students that streamed through Pensacola over all those years, bubbling with vitality and breathing life into the program.
The old familiar room we'd just left reflected the student spirit perfectly - boisterous and raw, uncertain yet confident, full of energy and optimism. This new side was polished, deliberate, serene, a votive offering to the best of the best - and through them, but extending beyond that small fraternity, it was a silent tribute to all those determined, hopeful faces on the sea wall who remain forever young, like Batt Four, just memories. Side by side in this ancient building the two rooms made for a perfect whole.
We'd made the circuit and it was time to go.
The cat was still busy with the newcomer, so we paid our respects and made our way back across the dimly lit bar and out onto South Palafox Street.
Outside the wind had shifted, and the breeze off the Gulf had a clean, fresh salty smell.
Shalom, Trader. Thanks for all the memories.