The Sun Rises In The West- The Saga Of The Golden Rule

Jonathan Alden, a much decorated World War II veteran of the Pacific wars, the wars against the Japanese and their puppet agents all along the China seas, had had a very hard time adjusting to what a later war-hardened generation, the Vietnam War guys, called the “real” world. It was not that he had been shell-shocked or anything like that, just a couple of minor flesh wounds that garnered him a purple heart (“shell-shocked the term of usage for those who suffered from the noise, horror and sight of war while under the gun before the term Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD, overrode that more literary expression). Although the constant sounds of munitions used to soften up the enemy and his stoutly held island redoubts in the Pacific in the “island-hopping” strategy that the thinkers in Washington had laid out would dwarf the arsenal used in all of World War I in which he took part as a patriot-proud Marine would have crippled many a man by its ferocity, and did. (And to keep things straight that First World War was also the world war fought to end all wars although even the half-smart knew that notion was just a “shill”).

No, what ailed Johnny Alden (everybody called him that since he was a kid except his mother who after all named him and so Jonathan to her which he hated to hear her yell out since it meant no good omen for him when he was young) had to with that “real” world in America that he had gone back to after saving vast swathes of it for democracy. He had been a believer in that mission although he held not grudge against the hated enemy’s civilians who were used as pawns or who were spoon-fed something, some bull-shit, by their respective governments. That long-drawn sympathy however did not stop him, for a while, from believing that the use of the Harry S. Truman-blessed atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki had been helpful to him saving him and his platoon the nasty job of joining with a thousand thousand other platoons to take down the Japanese on their home fortress.  Believed that idea while in his proud Marine uniform although he began to have just an edge of a second thought when he was part of the “Dug-Out” Doug MacArthur American occupation forces not far from those burned out locales and had witnessed some of the burn patients who languished in the local American hospital where he was stationed before his unit was demobilized home in 1946.     

But as the 1940s turned into the 1950s Johnny had become increasingly sullen about what he had helped bring about. Had more serious second thoughts about that small atomic bomb demonstration now dwarfed by weapons with mega-times the capacity to wreak havoc on a defenseless world. Of course that sullen withdrawn demeanor had effected his war-ignited marriage to Deborah McCoy, his college sweetheart, whom he had married just days before heading out to Camp Pendleton, the big Marine outpost on the Southern California coast, and to the Japan seas. That marriage had turned into rubble just like those shelled islands in the blood-boiled Pacific when she constantly complained about not having kids (and not having sex to have the kids for openings, sex which he had initiated her into one night shortly after Pearl Harbor when they had too much to drink at a frat party at Ohio State where they went to school).

He frankly told her he was against the family idea since he was not sure he wanted to bring kids into a world where each side in what was termed a red scare Cold War with America and the Soviet Union both armed, and arming, to the teeth. Deborah, however intelligent, and she was, succumbed not to his ant-war arguments but to the social reality of their new suburban development neighborhood outside Columbus where all the guys were grabbing GI Bill money for school and houses and all the gals were stocking the post-war world with babies. Eventually Johnny and Deborah agreed to divorce when they could no longer think of reasons to stay together. Hard, yes, hard.      

Johnny, once he had moved out of that suburban home, once he decided that he had to get out of one-size-fits-all “keep your shoulder to the wheel and don’t look up” Ohio where the Big Ten rivalry between Ohio State and Michigan was more intense that the Cold War and more blood-stained on the field (as well as more thought about) and headed to Boston. Boston as a destination was not accident since it was the home, or rather near the hometown in Concord, of Jim Reeves, a fellow Marine sharpshooter, whom he had been in contact with in conversations on the phone and more frequently by an exchange of letters and who had had some of those same problems as Johnny, although he was still happily married and had two young and as it turned out precocious children.

Hearing of Johnny plight after his divorce Jim invited him to the East, invited him out to talk to him and his wife who had helped him see things straighter than when he was a gung-ho kid who wanted to kill every Jap he could get his rifle sights on. See Jim had married a young Quaker woman, Susan Raye, whom he had met in Concord Center one afternoon when she was passing out leaflets against nuclear proliferation, maybe better put for nuclear disarmament by all sides and quick, and was getting harassed by some young guys who called her a “commie dupe,” called her a “red” at a time when such terms could mean serious criminal punishment, loss of job, loss of life even as the then recent executions of accused Soviet spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg graphically demonstrated as an object lesson. Jim went up to Susan with the idea of defending her against the riff-raff although he did not know exactly what was transpiring between her and the young punks. Damn but didn’t Susan put him in his place telling him she could handle her own affairs and berating him for threatening those punks with fists, and plenty of them.

On seeing Jim or maybe the force of Susan’s argument the young punks withdrew, they would argue over that for a few years before Jim conceded the point. What he would not concede that day or later was that this plainly dressed, unmade-up young woman fascinated him in a strange and wonderful way. So coffee was next at the Main Street Café and the rest you can figure out. Jim was still not a Quaker, probably never would be just too much Marine back street kid in him although he was glad their own kids were being raised in that tradition, but he did agree with their campaign to abolish nuclear weapons, had been to a couple of small silent vigils they called them on the Boston Common around Easter time, Good Friday where they would “witness” for nuclear disarmament and world peace (and he, burly ex-Marine him,  would be called “commie dupe” by other young city punks as they passed by but he held his peace for Susan’s sake).

When Johnny met Jim and Susan at their modest home (modest in a very upscale Concord community despite all the Walden Pond Thoreau stoic/Revolutionary War stoic deprived heroic history since Jim had inherited his family’s house when his mother had passed away) he sensed that this was something very different from the Ohio dungeon that he had left. They, meaning mainly Susan with Jim coming in occasion would give name to the things that had ailed Johnny since the war, had made him a sullen worried man. After a while Johnny got the anti-war “religion” although like Jim he would never be a Quaker, still too much Ohio “god and country” stuff in him but the next year after he settled in Waltham and got an engineering job his profession, he attended that Boston Common Good Friday silent vigil with Jim and Susan (and took the same “commie dupe” abuse from some  young city punks, who knows maybe the same that harassed Jim the year before but for Jim and Susan’s sake he too held his peace).          

Over the next couple of years he would attend that vigil and other Quaker-sponsored events with his friends (made by going to various Quaker suppers and the like) although he despaired about the ever-increasing amount of mega-weapons being stockpiled despite the increase in voices around the world that were calling for a halt. Then one Sunday Jim had invited him over to Concord to a little meeting of a few Quaker and pacifist activists (not all Quakers despite the “inner light” and peace witness aspects of their religion were activists out on the streets, not by a long shot, some liked to keep that inner light private, very private) to talk about a “project” they were undertaking. Two, Brad Lyndon and Josh Swan, did most of the talking but the gist of their “plan” was that as a demonstration against the horrendous proliferation of nuclear weaponry and testing they would sail unto the mystic, would sail a ship that they would purchase and rig out and sail to the nuclear testing sites out near Bimini in the Pacific and “dare” the world, the United States in this specific case, to keep doing the damn nuclear bomb testing.

Christ Johnny told Jim later these guys wanted to “head to the danger, not away from it” as Brad had said with a very straight Jehovah prophet face when laying out the plan. They had wanted to enlist Jim and Johnny as crew since they had been out there during the war and seemed the type to fit into the life of a sea-faring crew.  Both Jim and Johnny rolled their eyes as if the men were crazy and passed on the offer.                         

A few months later Jim called Johnny in a frenzy telling him that Brad and Josh among others had been arrested in Honolulu by the naval authorities there and detained. The ship, The Golden Rule, a righteous name had been confiscated and dry-docked. That is all he knew. All Jim knew also was that Susan in her most persistent Quakerly manner was hammering him to do something to help out. Jim and Johnny a couple of days later got on a plane at Logan Airport and headed west. Headed west to California to purchase another a ship (or rent one if any owner was crazy enough to do so to two guys who looked for all the world like landlubbers never mind what they were planning to do with the vessel), grab a seasoned crew, rig the boast out in order to skirt the naval authorities quietly and head to Bimini to try to complete the mission, to “head to the danger, not away from it.” Jesus.