40 years ago? You're kidding. Yep. 40 years ago. January 9, 1982

40 years ago today, I reported for duty at Naval Education and Training Center, Newport, Rhode Island, January 9, 1982. I'm writing a book. Here's that chapter.

“Attention on Deck! Ensign Bakes is here.”

Ensign Christopher J. Bakes, Judge Advocate General's Corps, United States Navy, arrived at Newport, Rhode Island on January 9, 1982.

I went into the Navy to serve my country, stand apart from the crowd, and annoy my father. (USAF, Ret.)

Before I left California, the Naval Education and Training Center was in constant contact. One of its letters was a clothing list. I wouldn't get my uniform right away so it was important I got a full list of what would be appropriate if I was going to be marching around on base in civilian clothes in formation. And one of those things was something called a “winter coat.”

NETC was where the Civil Engineers, Nurses, Dentists, and Lawyers went to learn how to be excellent naval officers. My first day reporting I went into the correct building but through the wrong door. It was the door reserved for people far below me in rank and status, and I was just an Ensign. There actually was lower. You see, while I had officer status by virtue of my commission, the "Officer Candidates" did not. They had to work for it. And one of the things they had to do was salute everything that moved.

That included a 25-year old San Francisco junior lawyer with hair slightly too shaggy as I would learn in a few short hours. But not with the OC's. One look at me and up they went to full attention, saying something that no lifetime Air Force dependent would understand without proper training.

What they were saying, as I would find out later, is "Attention on Deck!" and then some more shouting, and then all eyes at attention on me, the curly-headed attorney just in from Frisco (a crudity I had to get used to in the Navy).

Not knowing why I had caused all that commotion, I asked where the correct door was. I had not entered it, clearly. Someone from behind them whisked forward and directed me to another door, out and to my right, and there I'd find the proper entrance to Nimitz Hall.

On going in that door, the scene was way more relaxed. There was an older enlisted man standing there. He took my name and directed me to my "rack." Right there sir and up to the second deck.

I was about to learn a whole new life, a whole new way of relating, and a whole new way of talking.

I entered my room in the second deck and took a look at my rack.

Everything in the room was grey. Even the blanket on the bed. They’re still using those? The only other blanket anything like it was my grandfather’s blanket issued by the Army when he was working on the Al-Can Highway in maybe 1929. Here was that blanket. What was it doing in my room.

A lot about that room was like that. The grey desk looked like my dad’s desk from the post office. The grey linoleum had some green flecks in it so at least some color.

The desk lamp looked like it used kerosene. And I was supposed to sit at that desk on that chair? Green cushions on a, yes, you guessed it, grey frame. I moved it, expecting the smooth glide of the four wheels it had. I didn’t get that. I got the sound you get when someone has soldered the wheels so they don’t move.

Small windows. No curtains. I felt like an idiot even wondering about curtains.

Wow. I was really in the Navy. 7 months before I was a law school student about to graduate law school in glitzy San Francisco. And now I was here.

No glitz.

I unpacked. Clearly the “what to bring” letter from the Naval Education and Training Center was missing some words, like “don’t bring much.” Something told me I shouldn’t leave my suitcase out and just work from it while I was there. I was developing a sense of what ship-shape meant. No, obviously my suitcase had to be put away with everything unpacked into those two drawers the size of cigar boxes. Grey drawers.

That night we met our Company Commander. Lieutenant Jane Hammond, USN. She convened our group - Delta Company, we found out - for a talk.

This all seemed pretty relaxed. And what a nice lady lieutenant. Here was a perfect setting for a few witty bon mots and turns of phrase from yours truly. She would laugh delightledly.

As it turned out, many of my first instincts were off kilter in my early Navy days.

Lieutenant Hammond didn't laugh.

"So these floors are pretty clean. Who cleans them?" I gave the usual delivery that in other circumstances would have gotten a laugh.

Not from her.

"If you're referring to the DECK, it's you who clean the floor, Ensign." I had suffered the scorn of women before, warrior women with the first name of Sister middle name Mary to be exact. Here was an undeniable replica.

Not discouraged, I bided my time when she started the part of her speech about hair length. Judging from the crew cuts that surrounded me, I thought I could improve my position by making light of it. I timed my entry just right, and waited a few beats after Lt. Hammond’s comment about curly hair being mostly inconsistent with the naval service.

"But mine's just wavy, Lieutenant."

Apparently Lt. Hammond was unimpressed with the difference between "wavy" and "curly" because I was instantly on report for needing a haircut "first thing in the morning, and you can come by my office to confirm you got it."

OK, clearly new rules were in play. No witty comments, and particularly not to one of these humorless lieutenants.

I got my hair cut on base. The barber didn't ask me any questions about how I wanted it. What I got was something between Moe and Sergeant Carter. My hair hadn't been that short since my mother got the idea to give me a butch haircut the day before I started All Hallows.

When I showed it to Lieutenant Hammond she said I should leave my charming ways at the main gate and I was in the Navy now.

We didn’t have uniforms yet. That was coming. So we’d have to march in our civilian clothes.

None of this had occurred to me. I was a lawyer. I came from a dazzling world-class city. Now I was in this land of grey plus marching.

Yes we had to march that January of 1982. It was cold. Cold cold. Plus New England that January 1982 was hit by cold even the East hadn’t seen in a century. It was cold that I didn’t think existed. Being a Californian, our mountains where it snowed didn’t really get that cold. What this meant is that I had no appreciation for the fact that once the temp goes below 32 and keeps falling, it gets colder. 10 really is colder than 20. And it could even get below 0.

This is when I found out that what we in California call a “winter coat” is not what the cold states call a winter coat. Winter coat in California could mean a wind-breaker, a sport coat, or maybe even a rain coat could be a winter coat. Being cool, I didn’t have a rain coat. But I did have a nice sport coat, which I packed as my winter coat.

Delta Company had people from many states.

Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Maine, Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, South Dakota. The winter coat states.

Delta Company had only one person from California. The never heard of a winter coat state.

I was to soon find that there was great embarrassment marching around the base with Delta Company. It was maybe fine if you were on a marked road and the person leading you knew where they were taking you and there were other people marching too. But if the person leading you, like a dentist from Missouri, doesn’t know how to lead or see forward, you’re suddenly lost in the Commissary parking lot, with moving cars buzzing by your formation. Two times through the same area of the parking lot in the same marching formation and I was ready to talk mutiny, or at least depose the Missouri guy and replace him maybe with a New Englander used to this miserable cold. It being discussed up ahead that the dentist had to go, all eyes turned to me taking up the rear with the rest of the tall people. I was later to learn that I became the selection because they were confident I being highly critical of the weather would be the most incentivized to lead us to warmth.

On that they were right. In my nice sport coat and dress slacks I marched to the front and told the dentist to get back in formation. In no time we were in line for lunch. You want a speedy exit from bitter cold? Ask a Californian.

I was to make many winter mistakes during my months at NETC.

Like my comment “doesn’t anything stay green around here?” I was directing my comments to the complete death of all grass and shrubbery everywhere the eye could see. Where in California, lawns and shrubs are at their greenest in winter and we have palm trees to take up the slack for the trees that do lose their leaves, there was zero equivalent, as far as I could tell, anywhere east of the Sierra Nevada, a land mass that included Rhode Island.

Grey, no green, dirty snow, roads with inadequate signs and lights, and zero landscaped freeways.

To this point in my life, I had no sense of March 21 or of spring. Back in California it may have meant the start of the fire season, there being little chance of rain from then until about November. But in the East? That first tree bud was a dazzler. Day by day more clues of this thing called spring, and by the time April arrived that meant baseball and summer.

Only not that year in Newport, Rhode Island. That year in Newport, Rhode Island, the winter coat god sent a blizzard. Not just any blizzard. It was the blizzard of the century. The cold earlier that year was the cold of the century. Now a blizzard of the century.

Warnings started. Warnings from the TV. Warnings from the base.

Warnings everywhere about stocking up with food.

What? Blizzard? Food supply?

Suddenly my California realism set in. Being snowbound and stranded was the cue. The California dreamer was gone, replaced by a citizen of the state that had produced the Donner Party. And if there is one thing about life-threatening snow that all Californians learned from the Donners, you must not let yourself become the meal.

On April 6, 1982, the Blizzard of ’82 came.

In a month I’d be done with Naval Justice School and headed to San Diego, my first real duty station.

In just over a year after that, I'd be selected for transfer to the USS Orion, Sardinia, Italy, there to be discipline officer, Staff Judge Advocate, and highly competent JAG officer seconded to Submarine Group Eight.

The Navy can transform anyone.