The Smooth Log

   In the Navy, “The Smooth Log” refers to the typed copies of the ship’s log and quartermaster notes that are forwarded to the bureau. These typed up thoughts of my experiences, as nearly as I recall them, is my Smooth Log. If I have offended anyone in the way I have written about them, I must remind them that the war years were many years ago and my memory is not what it used to be.
Prior to this book I have never written anything of note for the reading public, with the exception of a few checks on an overdrawn bank account, a practice I have since discontinued in spite of great reader interest in that type of fiction.
-Preface from The Smooth Log by Fred "Spike" Hornquist, unpublished

Born in 1919 in Idaho, little Freddie would join the Navy for the promised three daily squares. He’d stay for twenty years. He’d stay through Pearl Harbor and the invasion of Okinawa. He’d stay for the friends, the women, the food and the stories.

As long as I could remember, Grandpa Fred did only a few things, one of which was typing at a trusty old typewriter in his bedroom while eating Snickers candy bars, the others were lying on the sofa and his favorite, eating anything covered in gravy. 

      He died in 1989 and my Grandma followed in 1997. Among her things, we found a thick stack of typed pages with the title, "The Smooth Log." I was 28 with a baby on my back and a toddler in tow and had to sort out her things on my own. I asked my brother, who is a poet, to take Grandpa's book. He was reluctant, but agreed. Several years later, he returned the book saying he didn't want it and if I didn't either, he'd toss it. I put it in the attic with all the other family relics. Many years later, after our kids moved out and the attic was cleared a bit, the book seemed to come to life and began calling to me. I couldn't stop thinking about it, but also didn't know what to do with, or about it. My husband scanned it somehow to put it into kindle format. We both read it and were surprised by how good it was.

     My Grandpa wrote his book while he studied Journalism at Evergreen State College, when we was fifty years old. which was about the same time he married my Grandma. Later in life, he played bass in a band, wrote a column in Loggers World called, "The Back of the Crew Bus," and ran for Mayor in a year when there was no election.

To me and my brother, Grandpa Fred was an unshaven, unkempt Swede on a 500 acre Christmas tree farm out in the boonies. He was a good storyteller for sure, but we tired of his tales of his logging days as a choker setter, the Navy stories, including the one where even though he quit drinking somewhere along the line, he toasted when the Queen came to celebrate the end of the war. In his stories, everyone had nicknames, even his Dad, who he called  Old Hardtack,so it was hard to keep everyone straight in the stories. It wasn’t until the year he died, when I was twenty, that I began to understand him. 

My VW Bug had broken down in front of my grandparents house and along with my new boyfriend and a couple hippie friends, we began to push the car to the side of the road. To my embarrassment, Grandpa came out to help. Suspenders over his Old Hickory loggers shirt. Greasy gray hair spiked from days on end of lying on the couch with his arm across his forehead with his nose in a book. He made a dramatic show that he was there to help. All eyes were on him as he made his way towards us. 

“I heard you needed help?” he said, a grin towards the ragamuffin crew.

I was about to tell him we were good and to stand back, when I noticed my friends open the circle into an arc to include him. He became light on his feet in a way I’d never seen.  He positioned himself in the center of the low bumper, squished in between my friends. With one hand towards the car, he gently placed two fingers to the bumper. I rolled my eyes. When he was sure he had the attention of my friends, he said, 

“I have the strength of ten, for my heart is pure.”

Those words and the audience he chose to share them with forever changed the way I him.

He died later that year.

At his funeral, there was a twenty-one gun salute and a perfectly crisp and neatly folded American Flag was presented to my Grandmother, to honor Grandpa’s years of service.

He is still remembered.