We can’t even get his name right. The majority of newspaper and official records spell it the way I did in the caption above, from the Civil War book Patriot Graves. But Bill Ash’s tombstone adds an “e”—Ashe—as does the tombstone of his son, both buried in the Arroyo Grande District Cemetery. A researcher nicknamed “Big Sur Baby,” who is diligent and valuable, lists at least one other name for him, “Charles Lewis,” on the website findagrave.com. There may have been at least one more name he gave himself in what turned out to be a relatively short life.

He was known, sadly, as “Whiskey Bill.” In this June 1889 clipping, he’s a guest of San Luis Obispo County Sheriff A.J. McLeod:

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But in May 1861, he was a different man, an enlistee in the United States Navy only a month after the attack on Fort Sumter. Here’s the record:

He’s a little fellow, about my size–it was more “average” in 1861–and his prewar occupation was, in fact as a “mariner,” so he was not a fresh fish in Lincoln’s navy. He’s twenty-six, born in Philadelphia, but I haven’t been able to learn much more than that. He’s enlisted for two years, but he served far longer than that. This poignant story is from an 1898 Arroyo Grande Herald-Recorder. I guess Bill Ashe needed whiskey money:

He wasn’t an “old soldier,” of course. He was a sailor, and a member of David Porter’s North Atlantic Fleet, seen in this photo leaving for Fort Fisher, a Confederate stronghold guarding Wilmington Harbor, North Carolina, in December 1864.

The assault was commanded by Gen. Ben Butler, notorious for his corruption as a military governor in New Orleans, and by Admiral Porter, who’s had a brace of warships named for him. Despite what was the heaviest naval bombardment in history up to that time, the 1864 assault ultimately failed.

I cannot find a record—yet—of that handsome gold medal that Bill Ashe earned and I wondered how he might’ve earned it. Bombarding an enemy fort from a relatively safe distance doesn’t seem to be heroic, unless you’ve actually done something like that.

Then I found this illustration from a U.S. Navy website:

So it’s possible that Ordinary Seaman Ashe earned that recognition for heroism on dry land, on the kind of frontal assault that reminds you of the doomed one undertaken by the 54th, on Fort Wagner, in the film Glory.

Bill survived Fort Fisher—it would fall the following year, 1865, a moment featured in Spielberg’s Lincoln, when the president’s about to tell his Ethan Allen story.

Ashe would be a Navy man for a long time. Big Sur Baby notes that one of his ships was the USS Jamestown, a sloop of war. This wouldn’t have been his ship at Fort Fisher—Jamestown was then in the Pacific, protecting merchant ships and whalers from Confederate commerce raiders.

After the Civil War, Jamestown remains a presence in the Pacific, showing the flag as far west as Tahiti and as far north as Sitka, until, in 1872, she becomes a shipboard training school at Mare Island, San Francisco. That’s the year when we find Bill again in this Navy record:

He’s an Old Salt now—thirty-eight years old—and has acquired, along the way, two tattoos: a ballerina on one hand and his initials “W.A.” on the other. After 1872, I was able to find a couple of possible Bill Ashes in northern California, but the next solid lead came in my hometown, Arroyo Grande.

This notice, in February 1882, reveals that Ashe has acquired ten acres of land in the Upper Arroyo Grande Valley, potentially bottom land passed down from town founder Francis Branch and his son-in-law, David Newsom. But there’s a caveat: It’s “monte land,” which means that, like most of the Arroyo Grande Valley, it’s still covered by monte–a dense mixture of scrub, including willow, that was as sharp as razor wire. That’s why Branch’s vaqueros wore leather chaps: chasing a runaway calf into the monte would cut a cowboy’s legs to pieces without the protection of his chaps.

So you guess that Bill began to clear his ten acres. My friend, historian Shirley Gibson, has told me that Bill was an extraordinarily hard worker who, in the years after this, took his pay in whiskey for clearing the monte off his neighbors’ land.

I am not sure what happened to Bill. It’s likely that he’d always struggled with alcohol addiction. While I am no psychiatrist, Bill’s seemingly precipitous decline may have begun with a brief life recorded by this tombstone in our cemetery:

I haven’t been able to find out a record of Mrs. Ashe, but the fact that Thomas’s age was calculated down to the days is revelatory to me. Bill would have been fifty-one in 1885, and Thomas, a name I’m fond of, must have been a great gift to him at that age. For a man whose life might’ve seemed to have reached its zenith at Fort Fisher in 1864, this little boy pointed to the future. You wonder if Bill’s future died, too, on September 24, 1885.

Four years later, Ashe is the guest of Sheriff McLeod, only to be humiliated in the local paper.

But in January 1892, the county Board of Supervisors reminded the navy veteran—and the rest of San Luis Obispo County, too—that they remembered “what Bill was once.” A road tax is levied on the farmers of the Upper Valley, with this notable exception in the language of the ordinance:

There were plenty of Army veterans in the Upper Valley—Erastus Fouch and Sylvanus Ullom, Gettysburg veterans, are just two examples—but there is only one Civil War navy veteran in our history, the only one buried in our cemetery, and that’s Bill Ashe.

Ashe’s death, from a stroke, came soon after this seemingly minor honor from the gentlemen who made up the Board of Supervisors. Twenty-eight years after— and a continent away from Fort Fisher, North Carolina—I don’t think the honor they paid Bill Ashe was in any way “minor” to the Supervisors.

The most memorable navy battle of the Civil War began today. On March 8-9, 1862, USS Monitor fought her duel with CSS Virginia in Hampton Roads, Virginia, and the little Monitor, with her rotating gun turret, presaged an age of American battleships that would dominate the U.S. Navy until December 7, 1941, when Arroyo Grande lost two sailors on USS Arizona.

So it’s a good day, March 8, to remember a Union Navy sailor like Bill Ashe. I will take him a little American flag tomorrow.

Happy Heavenly Birthday to Harry Belafonte (1927-2023). I’ve only mentioned this about twenty times, but when I was a kid, we listened to his Carnegie Hall concerts, double LPs, so often that you could almost see through them.

And I’ve posted Belafonte concert clips before–he is utterly charming and quite possibly the handsomest man God ever created–but these clips from Beetlejuice still make me smile. Big time.

“The Banana Boat Song,” With, among others, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara (“Schitt’s Creek”) and Dick Cavett.

And Ryder dances to “Shake Señora/Jump in the Line” as a bonus.

I once did a lesson where I showed my classes slides with photos of the interscholastic sports teams from when I was a student at their high school, Arroyo Grande, in the 1960s. I’d show the varsity football team, then the girls varsity soccer team. That was a blank slide. Then I’d show the boys varsity basketball team—it was a good one, coached by Mario Pecile, who became a legend—then the girls b-ball team. Blank slide.

I was making a point.

There were not girls’ interscholastic sports when I was in high school. They had Aqua Festival, which featured synchronized swimming. There were intramural sports, and one of the biggest clubs on campus was the Girls’ Athletic Association, but it if someone had asked you in 1968, “Are you going to the girls’ varsity game tonight in San Luis?” in 1968, you would have thought them insane.

That athletic desert for young women persisted until Title IX was passed in 1972, mandating that schools provide young women equal opportunity to participate in interscholastic sports.

There was no Title IX in 1910, but Arroyo Grande Union High School did have a women’s basketball team. The were 4-0–not, not a big season, and the scores indicate that the baskebtball spent a lot of time on the ground (“ground,” not “floor.” No AGUHS gym until 1937), but they had uniforms and they had a reputation and the newspapers covered their games. And we have this marvelous photo from the Bennett-Loomis Archives.

I don’t know what happened between 1910 and Title IX, but it was a tragic waste in human potential. Young women, to borrow a line from On the Waterfront, should’ve been contenders. A young woman and former student, Sarah—a fellow Basset Hound lover–put me in mind of this. She posted a picture of herself scaling a climbing gym’s wall and it looked as if she wasn’t having much trouble at all. Sarah is a terrific athlete, a gymnast, small but powerful, and flexible, too, in ways I haven’t been since I was a baby and could put my foot in my own mouth, a habit that continued, figuratively, long into adulthood.

So, thinking of Sarah and other women athletes I, of course, made a little video.

I follow Women’s NCAA basketball now and again, and so Caitlin Clark’s in here. Nelly Korda’s clubhead points directly at the target in her follow-through, and you have to be about a flexible as Baby Me to do that. Her swing is both fluid and immnesely powerful. Tia Jones—okay, I’ll admit it, she is beautiful, she reminds of FloJo, whom I adored—but I don’t see how anybody can leap hurdles, let alone the way she does in the clip.

And, of course, Simone Biles is my hero because she has both the courage of a champion and the kind of honesty that requires far more courage. She risked a storm of condemnation when she admitted her vulnerablity, her emotional exhaustion, at the last Olympics, and withdrew from some events. She’s back. The video clip of her tumbling run is from last fall.

All four have one more trait that makes them great athletes. They are a joy to watch. I’m looking forward to the Paris Olympics because of young American women.

Cheers was an immensely popular NBC comedy about a retired Red Sox pitcher and bar owner. His photo, behind the bar, was actually that of San Luis Obispo’s Jim Lonborg, also a Red Sox picture. The bar owner, Sam (Danson) ardently pursued his boss, Rebecca (Alley, who won multiple Emmys), who was marvelously skilled at shutting him down.

There was only one chink in Rebecca’s formidable armor, and it was this song. Her entire skeleton turned to boiled spaghetti. She swooned. I would argue, if there’s a song and a performance that deserves swooning, it’s “Unchained Melody,” as performed by the Righteous Brothers’ Bobby Hatfield.

Let the swoonage commence!

And, of course, I am not done. Let us take a moment to appreciate Hatfield and his baritone brother, Bill Withers. Wow.

Don’t ask me how I knew this. I don’t know, either. And I am not and never have—well, until this year, with their sensational rookie quarterback, C.J. Stroud, a Californian—paid the Houston Texans much attention.

But I always had the sense that this huge, powerful man, a defensive end, loves children. Of course, he loves his own: JJ and his wife, Kealia, with their son, Koa.

I love my sons, too, who are ever-so-much bigger than I am. But Watt’s love for children has always been obvious. That’s what made me first notice him.

You have every right to be cynical. Visits to children’s hospitals soften the image of what is admittedly a brutal sport. But I am reminded of these photos, too:

You can’t fake some things, PR opportunities or not. Justin Turner was Ryan Texeira’s friend. They enjoyed being together, in the same way that Watt so transparently enjoys being with children.

Here’s the best part, for me, at least currently: I asked Elizabeth the other night if I could watch the news at the top of the hour. I could only take about thee minutes of it before I turned the channel.

But, courtesy of Tribune editor Joe Tarica, we got this image of a tweet—or whatever they call them—that Watt posted earlier this week at Louisa’s Place in San Luis Obispo. It should be noted that Elizabeth and I taught a batch o’Sweeneys, the family that owns the restaurant, and we loved them. That does not detract from the glory of this image: A Louisa’s omelet is about the size of a fleet submarine and what’s inside them (my favorite is the avocado and bacon) can lead you to Glory.

He evidently was in town for a wedding, and he wrote of how excited the bride was and how happy that made him.

Righteous brother. He makes me happy, too.

What does that mean, younger folks? This beautiful young woman is French. Watch her face as she hears a Righteous Brothers song—Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield—from about 1965.

I guess, in losing Alexei Navalny and then watching the video of his beautiful, tiny, and immensely courageous widow, Yulia, I needed a Righteous Brother to comfort me because I fear so much for her, my Righteous Sister. This song is perfect for her.

I just never expected to find my Righteous Brother at Louisa’s Place.

Today’s blog post title shows you how much I like working without a net. I will now attempt to tie all of those elements together.

Let me start with my brother Bruce. Bruce is meticulous, precise and gifted in many ways. He builds stuff. When we were kids (he’s four years older), he built a scale model of the CSS Alabama, a sloop of war that played hell with Yankee shipping, especially with whaling ships, which I mind not very much at all. Bruce’s Alabama, a Revell kit, was gorgeous down to its copper-plated hull and including its monster swivel gun, a 110-pounder mounted amidships. (The Revell kit’s gun was somewhat smaller.)

Since yesterday marked the anniversary of the Confederate submarine Hunley’s first successful mission in attacking a Union ship—it was also her last, since the sub sank with her crew—thinking about Alabama today seemed natural.

And then we come to this Edouard Manet painting, Luncheon on the Grass.

I like Manet because he threw out this style, brightened his palette, and learned from young Impressionists like Renoir and Monet. That takes courage, humility and, conversely, a good deal of self-regard.

This painting baffles me. The young men are so full of self-regard—look at that one guy staring smugly at the artist—that they have failed to notice that one of their party is, to borrow a term, buck nekkid. How could anyone be so obtuse?

And what is the other lady doing, anyway? Pulling up watercress for their sandwiches? Trying to catch polliwogs? Has she lost a contact lens? And she’s in peril of losing her clothes, too.

In a trial-and-error process, I discovered that I like the French, especially those north of Paris, from Metz to Normandy. I just don’t understand them. This painting only confirms that.

Anyway, here is the original Revell model kit and a model that looks very much like the one my brother built, except I think his was under sail, not uncommon to 19th-century steamships. Again, his model was gorgeous.

Hang on. We’re almost getting to the point.

In 1864, off the coast of Cherbourg, France, citizens watched as the Union Navy finally caught up with Alabama. After a one-hour gun duel during which over 200 shots were exchanged, a hit at the commerce raider’s waterline sent Alabama to the bottom.

Edouard Manet painted the battle; below is his painting and a detail from it. A little rescue boat heads for Alabama as she begins her final plunge.

The rescue boat’s important, because Capt. Raphael Semmes, seen below next to the Big Fella during an 1863 visit to Capetown, South Africa, survived this battle. He had little Semmeses who had more of the same until…wait for it…I had the pleasure of teaching history to a direct descendant, Travis Semmes, at Mission Prep. Ta-daa!

By the way, Cherbourg has ties to San Luis Obispo County history, too. In June 1944, Jack Langston of Shandon lost his life over the city when German batteries brought down his fighter, a P-38 that would’ve looked exactly like the one in the photo. He was never found. Far below, the 79th Infantry Division was fighting street to street, a terrible thing for a foot soldier to endure. One of them, a San Luis Obispo County farmworker, Domingo Martinez, was there; the 79th secured Cherbourg but Martinez was killed in the bocage beyond the city in July. My students and I found his grave at the American Cemetery above Omaha Beach on a 2010 visit.

We wanted to thank him.

Raphael and Travis Semmes made up the first coincidence. The second has to do with the fact California mandates the teaching of state history in fourth grade. That included, in 1962 and still in 2024, the construction of a model California mission. It’s a rite of passage in California, like road rash from falling off your skateboard, Senior Class Night at Disneyland or getting lost on the 405.

Of course, this tradition of building a model of a California mission devolved into outbreaks of Helicopter Parenting, wherein in Mom and Dad “helped” their fourth-grader with their mission project, which might turn out to look liked something architect Julia Morgan had turned out in her studios.

Mine didn’t.

Mine, consisting of cut-up grocery store cardboard boxes, strips of newsprint that became gobs of papier-mache (the goo doesn’t taste all that bad, I found out), looked more or less like Richard Dreyfuss’ s mashed potatoes in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Contrast that image with the companies who figured out how to make a buck off modern fourth-graders by selling them manufactured kits (“Insert Bell Part 36a into Belltower Part 12”). This kit depicts Mission Santa Ines, my Mom’s favorite mission and my fourth-grade project.

Mine really shouldn’t have been named for little St. Agnes, who’d already been martyred once. It instead wound up looking like Our Lady of the Mashed Potatoes.

I passed fourth grade, despite that project. The historic coincidence? Here are Mom, Roberta, Bruce and me visiting Mission Santa Ines about 1960. Twenty-six years after that photo was taken, and twenty-four after my Mission Santa Ines fourth-grade project, my wife Elizabeth and I were married there.

The end.