My uncle Paul was cool as hell. He liked history, fast cars, and cherry pipe tobacco. He lived in Atlanta, but drove up to Philadelphia to visit my family almost once a month, bringing my cousin Alan and usually some explosives. Every time he came to visit us, we always toured a different historical landmark. Living in Pennsylvania, you could not go anywhere without passing a navy blue historical marker for a battlefield or house that George Washington peed in once, so we always had plenty of places to go. One of his favorite sites was the USS New Jersey in Camden, just across the river from Philly. We toured the battleship several times, and each time, as soon as I stepped on the bridge, I felt like a sailor.
Most normal kids would have found that stuff irretrievably dull and whined until their uncle bought them McDonald’s and put Nickelodeon on, but I was fascinated. I liked the way things looked in history — the machinery, the art, the clothing — it was all so elegant looking, unlike our stupid box TV and all the clothes at Limited Too (which I still wanted anyway.)
Paul passed away around Thanksgiving in 2011. He made plans with my mom to come up for the holiday and cancelled at the last minute because he had not been feeling well. A few days later, at the end of a waitressing shift, I got the call. It was an impossible loss.
As Alex and I made our way up to Maine, we visited Portsmouth, New Hampshire, planning to explore some shops and absorb one of our last coastal experiences before heading inland. We ate breakfast at an adorable restaurant called The Friendly Toast, decorated in the sort of quirky kitsch you can only find on EBay and staffed by women who look exclusively like Rosie the Riveter.
After wandering the streets, exploring a few shops, we decided to head back to the hotel. On our way out of town, I saw the submarine and cried. I missed Paul, and there is probably no activity on Earth besides watching 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea or driving around in search of black ice to slide on that would have reminded me of him more. I wanted to see it because of its history but also because of the presumed closeness to someone I had lost that I hoped it would give me, no different than smelling someones perfume years after they are dead.
Reveled for its innovations in underwater engineering, particularly in regards to speed, the USS Albacore earned status as a National Historic Landmark in 1989, when it retired to a small park outside of Portsmouth.
The gentleman taking tickets was a sweet, elderly Navy veteran who said nothing about my swollen, red eyes and smeared makeup.
“Why did you decide to stop and see the Albacore?” he asked.
I was honest, sharing more of myself than I am normally comfortable with. I get like that when I am either uncomfortable or feel unexpectedly connected to another individual. This was the latter.
He instructed us to push the red buttons perched throughout the vessel, each playing a brief recorded history of the submarine and accounts from men who served on the ship. We gawked at the cramped living quarters, four bunks stacked closely with only two feet between each bed. We each crawled into separated bunks to test their size and the threshold of our claustrophobia, joking about the frequency of bumped heads. The air smelled like rubber and steel.
The narrow hallway lead to control panels, the crew’s quarters, and a bathroom so small we wondered how anyone could ever get clean. When we got to the mess hall, we let our imaginations go loose, picturing young Navy officers playing pinochle and smoking hand-rolled cigarettes. The submarine was nearly perfectly intact, complete with the original engine and periscope. It felt like the end of Titanic, when old Rose imagines she is back on the ship, except we had never been there before.
I sat behind the main control panel, examining all the buttons, and pretended to fire a torpedo into enemy waters. I thought about Paul. He would have loved this, and he would have gotten to all of the little red buttons first.
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