Line of Departure

We are in northern Michigan on a cool summer night, and we are fighting the Cold War. But we don’t think of it that way, not even remotely.

There are seven of us, and we are sitting around a small camp fire, knocking back a few Budweisers. We’re not supposed to have a camp fire and we’re not supposed to have beer—and certainly should not have been drinking beer on the OP earlier in the day. But there are no officers around, which is frequently the case. It is one of the virtues of our MOS, that we are usually free of officers.

It is the end of Annual Training. Sixteen days, most of them spent in the field. We are National Guardsmen, part-time soldiers, most of us in it for the college tuition. We are also field artillery forward observers, trained to kill the enemy with binoculars and a map. And all we had done that day was observe fire as two mortar platoons expended their rounds, because of the standing orders to use up all ammunition that had been issued.

The prospect of going home is always appealing and maybe that’s why one of the guys begins to sing. The song is slightly ribald. We’re a little taken aback—by the singing, not the ribald part--but we’re feeling mellow and tolerant. Enough so that when the first guy challenges the guy next to him to sing a song, the second guy does. And it goes around like that, one guy to the next, until it’s my turn. I don’t have much of a voice but there’s a song that’s been on my mind and I’m relaxed enough to give it a go. The song is quiet, calm, and easy to sing:

Now back when this earth was a silver blue jewel
and back when your grandfather's father was young,
men of these shores made and gave up their lives pulling up fish from the sea.

While down in the African slavery trade, stealing young men to cut sugar cane,
rum to New Bedford and codfish from Maine,
they were building a wall that will always remain.

Oh, the crown and the cross the musket and chain,
the white man's religion, the family name.
Two hundred years later and who is to blame?
The captain or the cargo or the juice of the sugar cane?

The doryman he knows when the riptides will run,
he sets out his nets and he sits in the sun.
He thinks of his family and drinks of his rum and he waits for the codfish to come.

It's the same goddamned ocean that keeps them alive,
it will swallow you up, it will let you survive.
It will heal you and steal you and take you away
like a note in a bottle with nothing to say

Now back when this earth was a silver blue jewel
And back when your grandfather's father was young,
Men of these shores made and gave up their lives pulling up fish from the sea.

For a moment no one says anything. They didn’t quite expect to hear “Sugar Trade,” written by Jimmy Buffett but known to me by way of the cover by James Taylor.

"That's not bad, Grimsley," one of them finally says.

That was thirty-five years ago. I’ve been thinking about that song again of late. Especially the line about building a wall that would always remain.

This afternoon I told my 8-year old daughter the camp fire story and I began to sing the song. I got as far as “stealing young men to cut sugar cane” before I choked up a bit and simply spoke the rest of the lyrics. I explained to her about the triangle trade. (You may think it strange but she likes these kinds of moments with her father.) I find “Sugar Trade” for her on YouTube—you can find everything on YouTube—and we listen to Taylor’s gentle rendition. She asks to hear it again. We talk about it a little bit more, then go out to rake the leaves in our back yard.