Parked in the opening of Muskegon Lake to Lake Michigan stands the Submarine USS Silversides who proudly bears 44 Japanese flags (for 44 known "kills" of Japan’s fleet), 2 saved airmen, and many military decorations. We boarded the sub and climbed down into the smelly interior and crawled through hatches much too small for our bellies! To get from one end to the other, you have to crawl through several of these hatches; and to get "below decks" you have to go through a hatch about the size of a lobster pot (Chuck said he went up and down that hatch 20 times a day). To qualify to stay on a submarine you have to study and train to be able to run every department, to turn every crank, and to maintain the engines, batteries, electrical systems etc etc. One of the qualifying maneuvers is to run from one end of the sub to the other in one minute (Chuck knows the exact time… it’s like one minute). It took me about 2 minutes per hatch to duck down and grab a pants leg to lift my leg up and through the hatch and then to grab the other pants leg and drag the other leg through the hatch. And then don’t stand up too soon!!!! The sailors proudly showed me their "battle stations." One guy squeezed into a tiny space housing about one hundred dials and said "here’s my battle station." That guy was responsible for keeping the boat from disaster as well as all the other guys who said, "here’s my battle station…" They talked about diesels (the Silversides has 4 giant diesel engines that are roughly equivalent to rail road engines.) When they fired up the engines the men just started shouting… I was overwhelmed with the noise! And don’t forget the pervasive smell of diesel fumes (like riding behind an old fashioned school bus or metro bus). The Quillback had only 3 diesels but it had a still for making water so the Quillback cook could take daily showers and the men could get two bowls of water for washing teeth, face and underwear. The Picuda men said they got no water as they didn’t have a still. Yikes. On this Memorial Day, remember the men who rushed out of Pearl Harbor after we were so brutally wounded and took out after the Japanese Navy. On Sunday we will remember the dead in the "Tolling of the lost boats" ceremony.
We are riding north today to help a friend who drove up from Big Pine Key and is going to try to sell her Michigan house. We’ll help her clean up the yard and inside of the house to make ready for the realtor visit. We might also go to see the big dunes of sand that Lake Michigan spews up on her shore. I understand it’s quite spectacular. As we drove towards the Silversides I saw a lot of sand on the roads and piles of sand that had been moved off the road by road clearing equipment. Apparently the snows make the lake spew up sand. Have a wonderful Saturday and may it be sunny and bright as it is here on the shores of Lake Muskegon. God bless you! Sue