•  john f. kennedy and jackie kennedy and walter cronkite were on dad’s ship, the joseph p. kennedy (‘john was on the ship because he wanted his brother’s name to be historic’), during the blockade. there were a lot of ships and jets. the whole navy, maybe. sounded really exciting, i’m not describing it well. russian ships were moving towards cuba so they could attack the u.s. and the u.s. found out. all the russian ships retreated but one merchant ship. dad said four or five guys from his ship got on a small boat (he described as ‘from here to the other side of the room’ i said ‘like one of the lifeboats on the cruise ship?’ he said ‘yeah, yeah, almost exactly like that, yeah. a little smaller’) to make sure there were no missiles on the russian merchant ship. he said ‘and then we told them to go back to russia, and they did. they didn’t really do a thorough check of the ship, the guys. everyone was nervous.’ he said something about khrushchev. jesus, wonder if i can describe…he ‘acted’ the conversation between JFK and khrushchev with a lot of attitude, like this: ‘khrushchev said ‘look at our ships, look at what we can do.’ and we said ‘oh yeah? well look at our ships, think about what we can do.’ the merchant ship was just khrushchev saying ‘don’t forget, i’m not afraid to do this, too.’ so we said ‘oh we see that you can do that. you’d better not do any more though, because look at us.’ he was giggling kind of, seemed really happy to tell this story.

•  by the time the cuban missile crisis started, dad didn’t need to be in the navy anymore, but they made everyone stay an extra six months. he really didn’t want to be there. he started growing a beard. cleanliness was big. you were not supposed to grow beards. he told his friends he was growing the beard so when he got off the boat ‘castro would be able to recognize whose side he was on.’ the guy in charge of my dad noticed and called him into his office. he said ‘boyle? get that goddamned thing off your face.’

•  drill thing: after the missile crisis, they started doing this circle thing for practice. the u.s. owns an island in the carribean near the panama canal. they test bombs there. dad’s ship was in a circular line with a lot of other ships. there were jets, too. just…it was everyone, moving in a circle around the island and the panama canal. whenever your ship or whatever reached the island you just ‘gave it all you got.’ you shot everything. some ships contained marines who would run onto the island while it was getting ‘practice-shot’ at, who would then shoot ‘giving it all they got’ at nothing (when i asked about this dad said ‘they were marines, they just knew how to not get shot’ which i don’t…jesus, i don’t know about this one). i said ‘seems like a thing kurt vonnegut would put in a book, going around in a circle to take turns shooting at nothing.’ dad did his ‘dad-style’ nose-scrunch cackle and said ‘yes! yes that’s exactly what it was like! a kurt vonnegut thing.’ he looked happy. later he said ‘it was really something, to do that. it was like all the fourth of julys, just going off, shooooom.’