The width of the street was little more than three car widths from curb to curb. Each curb had a parking lane. That left one for traffic. It was a cold Indianapolis winter day. The Beatles’s first song still lay in the future. I would not listen to a Beatles song enough to know the title until two or three years after that future arrived.

Right now I was terrified. A man had entered the traffic lane and it seemed I was hurtling toward becoming the cause of his death due to vehicular manslaughter. He didn’t look around. He seemed totally unconcerned about his impending death that was still a couple seconds away and could be avoided if he acted quickly.

I braked and braked and braked as he nonchalantly opened the door of a huge 57 Playmouth station wagon, climbed into the driver’s seat and closed the car door.

As I passed his car, I rolled the window down and shouted “watch for cars.” Wouldn’t you?

OK, maybe YOU would be very quiet and thank the precious Lord that you had not run over him. Even at the speed you had slowed to before what would have been impact, say ten mph, you could have killed him.

OK, YOU might have been very quiet and thanked the Lord he was a 40 year old, not dangerous looking man.

If YOUR gratitude had reached that point and stopped you would have missed the greater probability.

At this point we need to have a name for the man in the giant Plymouth with the ridiculous, huge tail fins. I was thinking Perp but I settle on Nut Job. Let’s name his car Fins.

Nut Job somehow, somewhere wheeled Fins around and suddenly was behind me. I went faster realizing now that I had a crazy man behind me. He went faster. I went faster. He went faster. Eventually I decided I would not be able to lose him and may as well face him and try to figure out his problem and reason with him.

I parked around the corner from residence. I stepped out of my car and turned toward him. He had parked behind me. I was looking down the barrel of a real pistol for the first time. A Nut Job was yelling at me a pistol for the first time. He seemed to go on yelling forever. “You stupid punk. You are all stupid punks. You think you can just do whatever you want to. Well, I am going to teach you a lesson. You don’t know who I am, do you? Well, punk, I am a cop.”

For the first time I spoke. “Thank God. I thought you were a crazy person chasing me down, waving that gun threateningly, and raging.”

I was booked and charged with three simple, ridiculously twisted charges. I was guilty of nothing. I got a lawyer. The Indianapolis version of justice wanted to put me in prison for 18 months and charge me an $1,800 fine. THAT’S RIGHT. FOR NOTHING. My lawyer said to tell the judge I was going into the military and prison would invalidate that “opportunity.” The judge said the court would verify and if I weren’t in military within a month, I would go to jail.

Even at the tender age of 18, I knew I did not want any part of the military. But it seemed a better fate than prison. I wore glasses. That precluded my joining the Army Paratroopers and completing my military service in 18 months. I didn’t want to crawl in the mud forever. I joined the Navy.

In Boot Camp I was a platoon leader because I had R.O.T.C. in high school. In placement the Navy offered to send me to any university in exchange for an extra two years Naval duty. I declined.

The Navy sent me to six months of electronics, telegraph, teletype, communications training. I learned everything about electricity, electronics, transmitter, receivers, power supplies, morse code. Annnnnnndddd TYPING.

The Navy’s misplaced elitism was ludicrous.The enlisted ranks of the Navy was no place for a real maverick who was not at all happy about having been shanghaied.

BUT, the Navy had mastered the art of technical training to the degree they made the fulfillment of their motto possible. CAN DO. Navy schools taught you what you needed to know without the philosophy behind it. Not WHY TO. But, HOW TO. And it stuck. And it is still sticking. Except that I added the philosophy and the WHY TO because that was for me the icing on the cake. But when I reached Norfolk, Virginia after my training, I knew my job. I knew I could deliver. And somehow the Navy testing had placed me in the most fitting job for me in the Navy that did not require a university degree. The Navy had discovered what I could learn to do that could help me repeat the Navy motto with assured confidence.

I CAN DO. It resonated. My father had never told me what I could not do. He told me what I did not have permission to do. As in “no, you may not.” But I never heard him tell me I was incapable of doing anything.

When I left my first Navy Radioman billet, our Commander gave me a very personal letter of reference. “He is the best morale builder I have had. He is technically competent. He is tenacious. He is an imaginative problem solver.”

I had roughly two years of service remaining in the Navy. I maneuvered eventually a job in the flag admiral’s staff. I was on a boat. But it was a tender tied to the dock. I was tied to the tender. And the admiral’s staff.

I had returned to the religion of my youth. I was a baptist. The church I went to supported a theology school. I had found a new goal. I would be a linguistic missionary.

For the last two years of my four year agreement with the Navy, when I went to work I was a sailor. I was a professional US Navy sparky. I had the sparky insignia on my arm. The electrical lightning bolts. They always made me think about Ben Franklin.

Our communications team handled Naval communications for the recovery from the water for the Project Mercury and Project Gemini. We received Navy citations for our work on both projects. Astrologically, my sun sign is Gemini. My ascendant is Gemini. Gemini is ruled by the planet Mercury. The symbolism, Mercury, represents communication, learning, speed. While I am not crazy about the pseudo science of Astrology, I cannot deny I am exactly what my astrological chart says: a dualistic, duplex, communicator.

I took the Navy experience to the bank. I studied computer science at UCLA. My first six years in computers I worked for the integrating contractor of the Air Force Satellite Control Network. We made those satellite pictures of cold war Russian activities possible. CAN DO.

I spent almost twenty years living around the world learning languages and cultures and oh, yeah, making airline and travel software function for 25 of the world’s greatest airlines.

As a corporate technical educator I designed, implemented, and managed the world’s best corporate education system. Its principles were based somewhat on the Navy’s system. The erstwhile training manager would often say to me “Jack, I don’t think we have been told we can do that.” I would reply “Horst, in the Navy we had a motto. “CAN DO.” The motto was not “CAN NOT DO.”

I sailed out of the Navy with technical knowledge, a track record of overcoming obstacles on the way to success, and two years education off base in theology and linguistics.

I never intended joining the military. But having been coerced by necessity, I made walking the plank a springboard to success, not a death walk to Davy Jones’s Locker. To some extent the Navy did indeed make me. But just as truly, I made the Navy.

John McCain says he is a maverick, a rebel. But John McCain has never had to work a day in his life. He is a diabolical parasite. I have given far more than I have taken. Perhaps, in today’s world, I would be considered stupid and John McCain smart. People such as I will be required in tomorrow’s world, on the road to a true and realistic Utopia, not a phony freedom of lies and trickery, . And more than ever people like John McCain will be deprecated, and despised.

My Navy motto says “CAN DO” not “CAN DO DO.”

by jack luna MOTH