LAST CALL FOR EDWARD

Sun.  Sea Spray.  Hull smashing through rows of swells.  The ship’s deck heaving from and dropping into an endless parade of oncoming waves.  Turn your face towards the sun and catch a million dancing reflections on the water glistening back at you.

If you’re on a sailboat, there is no engine noise, just the sound of wind blowing through your hair.

Both Olcott brothers were watermen, even though they were descendants of the landlocked Dzūkija region of Lithuania.  I am a waterman too, raised on many afternoons of sailing on Shinnecock Bay, Long Island during my young summers in the 1960s with my Dad.

However, by the age of twelve, I had discovered a simple way to elevate the pleasure and excitement of wind, sea, and waves.  Instead of being on a boat in the water, how about doing away with the boat?  Watch sets of giant waves roll in while at sea level, exactly.  Body surfing.  Maximum exposure.  If you could time and catch them right, you could slide down a crystal slope while the tube of water breaks above and behind you.  The payoff is maybe eight seconds of pure exhilaration that seems to last perhaps up to half an hour.  You’ll never forget the view of giant slopes of water marching towards you, with the last wave looming higher over the others.  That last one, with the face of the sun sparkling back at you, will be the wave you want.  And sometimes, it will take a fair amount of courage to try to pick off that last wave, the king of the set.

But this was me in the water, maybe 30-50 yards away from the shore.  Both my Dad and his Brother crossed the oceans – what about seeing rogue waves 3,000 miles offshore?  I shudder to think what they must have gone through.

Photo courtesy of SeanDavey.com

Thus, they were competitors for the family Neptune crown.  As detailed in my post “THE FINEST ESCAPE” last week, my Dad crossed the ocean blue in July 1937 aboard the SS Exeter.  For his part, my Uncle Edward was no slacker – he got himself to be NY 2nd district Congressman Brunner’s 1st Nominee for the United States Naval Academy in 1935.  And then served on several ships in World War II as an officer starting in 1939.

Edward Olcott, US Naval Academy Official Portrait 1939.

That should have been the end of the tournament.  Edward was a naval officer and king of the seven seas, right?  Wrong! – as my Dad was quick to point out.  Even though he enlisted in the landlubbing US Army, he went on to win the nautical competition handily as Edward found himself stricken with numerous afflictions during his service, ending up in Psych wards with an “unable to perform his duties” diagnosis at military hospitals in Casablanca and St. Albans, Queens.

The two watermen.

To be the main waterman was of paramount importance to my Dad and he made sure to lay it on real thick whenever his own Mom or Dad were singing Edward’s praises (as they were wont to do).  Sometimes, those hymns led to him and I getting a bum’s rush out of my Grandfather’s house, see my post “MY GRANDFATHER AND THE DOOR TO THE OLD WORLD, PART 2.”

For all this, and their long history together, the only time I ever heard Dad mention his brother (my Uncle) was in a ruse he developed to pay only the cheapest long distance fees to the telephone company in the 1960s and 1970s.  It was done by playing an operator for what used to be called a “person-to-person” call.

In today’s world, we don’t give much mind to “long distance calls.”  Even with international calls, high charges are easy to beat by using Skype or phone cards.  However, fifty years ago, a call from New York to Florida (or even New Jersey) could cost as much as a couple of dollars and with phone tag an ever present possibility, you could make an expensive call only to hear that “Dave’s not here.”