Every day, it seems like the world is tottering on the edge of the extreme – Hawaii is burning down; partisan politicians can’t find the center; and criminals are running amok in the cities. As I think back, however, even my personal life has been one jam-up, re-jiggered, goat-roping, train wreck of extremes.
I remember when we were studying ship navigation in Naval Officer Candidate School it seemed like the instructor spent an inordinate amount of time discussing the concept of “in extremis,” or a “suddenly difficult situation.”I took it personally, but he was talking about when your ship is in danger of immediate collision – say you are plotting an oncoming ship on the pilothouse radar, and you notice that the plot is “constant bearing and decreasing range.” That means that a collision is about to happen unless the burdened vessel changes course. Of course, you must know the nautical “rules of the road” to know which ship is the “burdened vessel.”
I think I was “in extremis” in elementary school. Maybe that’s why the teacher kept moving me around the classroom. One day I’d be sitting in the back behind Harold, and the next day I’d be sitting behind Joe. I never did make it to the front row with all the smart and beautiful people.Maybe I didn’t know the elementary school rules of the road. As I walk back my life, I seem to have bounced from one extreme to another. It is obvious, however, that extremes define and shape our character in a unique way.
When I was in college, I was riding a Brahmi bull named “Try Me” in a Wilmer, Alabama, rodeo, and when he bucked me off, his back hooves landed about six inches from my head. Luckily, I rolled in the right direction. During a pitch-black night in Rome, I was one step away from walking into the path of what must have been the quietest streetcar in the world, but something held me back. Once while being high lined by boatswain’s chair between two ships steaming alongside in high seas, the ships came closer together than they should have, slacking the line, and I was dunked and submerged for about as long as I could hold my breath.
In Vietnam, a mortar shell exploded about twenty feet from me, but the shrapnel which saturated the area where I was lying inextricably missed me. Lining up for a parachute jump, the kid behind me checking my chute found a potential malfunction, called it to the attention of the jump master, and probably saved my life. When the terrorist bomber blew up the barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, and killed those 241 U.S. Marines and French Foreign Legionnaires in 1983, I had exited the building about 20 minutes before the explosion.
Anyone can make such a list of things or events that have gotten them “in extremis,” but let me share just a few of my more benign ones that were not quite as dramatic. For example, I know I’ve written stories about my parachuting experiences in this newspaper before, but a new, very “extreme” one does stand out in my memory. On the last day of parachute school, at Fort Benning, Georgia, which is now woke Fort Moore, the only U.S. Army base named after a married couple, the head instructor, one of the dreaded Vietnam-era “Black Hats,” called us all together underneath the wing of the C-141 Starlifter airplane as we waited for the wind to die down under 12 knots so we could make our first jump. Everybody’s just praying that they can live through five jumps, because you get your jump wings awarded on the drop zone right after the fifth jump. You will worry about the more jumps later.
He said, “We need to talk about what happens if your parachute doesn’t open,” which immediately got everyone’s attention. He said, “This morning, we are going to be jumping at a height of about 1500 feet. For the average man, weighing about 180 pounds, if your parachute doesn’t open, it will take you approximately ten seconds to hit the ground and die.” He continued: “For the average man, with average awareness, it will take him about three seconds to realize that his main chute has not opened. For the average man, with average reflexes, it will then take him approximately four seconds to deploy his reserve parachute.”
Hearing this, I’m thinking to myself: “If my parachute doesn’t open, I’m a dead man, because I’ve never had ‘average awareness’ or ‘average reflexes.’” The instructor concluded: “Let’s load the plane, men. You figure it out. If your parachute doesn’t open immediately, it will take ten seconds for you to hit the ground and die. If you are alert, it will take you three seconds to figure out that something is wrong, and four seconds to pop your reserve. Do the math. 10 minus 3 minus 4 equals 3. The moral of the story is: if your parachute doesn’t open this morning, you have exactly three seconds to fool around!” Three ticks on your watch. That, dear reader, is extreme.
Less harrowing, but also extreme, was when I lost both my big toenails when I climbed Mt. Fuji in Japan the first time. My ship was in port Yokohama for a few days, adjacent to the dry dock where the Japanese Navy’s giant battleship, Yamato, was built during World War II, and the ship’s doctor and I decided to take the train up to Tokyo and climb Mt. Fiji. “Climbing” is really a misnomer, as you just walk up it. 12,388 feet high, it is a holy mountain, a place of pilgrimage for those of the Shinto religion, and there is a narrow, precarious, but well-beaten path to the top. Once you get above 10,000 feet, it becomes hard to breathe, and many climbers, especially tourists, are turned back with altitude sickness. The Doc and I were struggling along, about that high, when we were embarrassed to be passed by a little old Japanese grandmother in tennis shoes, who probably climbed the mountain every day for exercise. Anyway, there’s this neat Swiss chalet-type village at the base of the mountain where everyone is advised to buy a climbing staff. You are told that you “will really need it going down the mountain,” which made no sense at the time.
As you proceed up the mountain, with your staff in hand, about every 200 yards there is posted a Shinto priest squatting over a charcoal brazier and who, for a couple hundred yen, will take his hot branding iron and “brand” on your staff the height up the mountain you have attained so far. It soon becomes your goal to get all the brands and to get the ultimate one, the piece de resistance, at the summit.
Once on the top, which we finally reached after stopping and resting about every 50 yards, the view was magnificent, but a Japanese soldier posted there informed us that we would have to go down the mountain on the opposite side, which had no path, and was a sliding pile of volcanic ash and rock debris. This is what claimed my toenails. Because of the steep grade as I literally plunged down the mountain, leaning heavily on my branded staff, my feet slid forward in my shoes with enough pressure and long enough that, after I got back to the ship and within a matter of days, both big toenails had turned black and fallen off.
I guess that’s more dignified than what happened to me at Chichen Itza down in Mexico a few years ago. I had climbed to the top of the Mayan ruin’s main temple, which is several hundred feet high, when I looked down at the narrow steps leading back to the ground, got dizzy, “chickened out,” and crept back down the steps, one at a time, on my rear end. Chickened out at Chichen Itza.
Finally, you wouldn’t often think of book collecting as an “extreme,” but I just turned my den into a full-fledged library to house my collection of at least 4,445 books. My children said it was “extreme” because I put up a sign saying, “Benny Hornsby Memorial Library,” and I’m not even dead yet. Many of my books are left over from my career in the Navy. Although I almost flunked out of high school, I had already been briefed up and traveled around the world vicariously by reading books when I enlisted.As the poet, Emily Dickinson, said in her “Poems” (1830):
There is no Frigate like a Book
To take us to Lands away,
Nor any Coursers like a Page
Of prancing Poetry –
This Traverse may the poorest take
Without oppress of Toll –
How frugal is the Chariot
That bears a Human soul.
Always broke, I generally sailed with a big bag of used books to read. I was once at sea for over 300 days straight, and books kept me from going insane. When I was 17, on my first ship, we were all lined up for clothing locker inspection, and my copy of the “Odyssey” fell out of my locker on the deck when I opened the door for my Division Officer. A recent Yale graduate, he picked it up and said, “You read Homer, Reb?” I said, yes, sir.” Satisfied, he moved on the inspect the next man. I was always attracted to the “classics” and to authors like Shakespeare, Rudyard Kipling, and Joseph Conrad, usually spending my time ashore in English-speaking cities overseas combing through used bookstores looking for their books. Consequently, I have almost complete collections of their respective works. I was able to write my MA thesis on the theme of honor in Shakespeare’s history plays at the University of Rhode Island without hardly going to the university library, except to study what the critics and academics had said.
This Saturday, 19 August, my wife and I will join an OLLI (Ochsner Lifelong Learning Institute) group going to Jackson to spend the day at the 9th annual Mississippi Book Festival, aka the Mississippi Literary Lawn Party. According to the official brochure: “Each August, the Mississippi Book Festival unites readers and authors in an exhilarating celebration of books. The capitol’s stately rooms and nearby Galloway Church turn into venues for distinguished panelists, the streets in-between transform into a bustling marketplace for booksellers, and the grounds and Capitol Rotunda become a hub of lively exchange.”
What’s happening is that on Saturday, thousands of readers (over 6,000 in attendance last year), authors, facilitators, booksellers, and concessionaires will descend on the state capitol grounds from 0900 a.m. until 5:00 p.m. to discuss, buy, sell, and learn about books. Attendance is free. Park where you can around the capitol complex. Starting at 9:30 a.m., panel sessions will be held every 90 minutes by famous and distinguished authors, personalities, and academicians. For example, former Vice President Mike Pence will be there in the afternoon to discuss his new book, “So Help Me God” (2023); at least three Pulitzer Prize-winning authors will be discussing their books; Rea Hederman, scion of the Hederman publishing dynasty (“Jackson Daily News,” “Clarion Ledger” newspapers), will discuss his ownership of the “New York Review of Books” since 1984; Rick Cleveland, “Mississippi’s Most Beloved Sportswriter,” will discuss Mississippi football and its cultural impact. There will be dozens more authors and countless books represented. Check it out at msbookfestival.com.
All in all, whether you are a bibliophile, or just a casual reader, I think you would enjoy attending. Last year, the state grounds struck me as being safe, with plenty of uniformed Capitol police highly visible. Also last year, a highlight of my attendance was a meaningful conversation with civil rights icon, James Meredith, the first African American student at the University of Mississippi (1962). Then 89 years old, but still displaying an incisive wit, he was sitting underneath a tent in the bookselling area, behind a tableful of his book, “Three Years in Mississippi” (1966). Naturally, I bought one; he autographed it for me (“To Benny: Keep up the Struggle!”); and it occupies a prominent place in my new library.
In another of his books, Mr. Meredith coined an extreme phrase that I will always remember and that most any lover of books will understand: “Mississippi,” he said, “is the most powerful word in the English language.”
Light a candle for me.
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Benny Hornsby of Oak Grove is a retired U.S. Navy captain. Visit his website, bennyhornsby.com, or email him: villefranche60@yahoo.com.
