Many years ago, when I was in kindergarten, I often had a habit of wearing a sailor suit to school. (Pictured, you can see our captain as a youth, flipping through his latest copy of Lakeland Boating.) It was complete with a crow on the left arm and three chevrons and a wheel beneath, designating the rate of quartermaster, 1st class. On the right forearm was sewn a silver shield, the sole distinction identifying the enlisted uniform of a U.S. Coast Guardsmen from his Navy counterpart. I lived close to school then and would often walk home for lunch. On occasion, while waiting to cross the street, a grownup would ask, "Are you in the Navy?"

"No! I'm in the Coast Guard," I would reply rather abruptly, as if having been insulted by their lack of recognizing my uniform.

While other kids were playing G.I. Joe after school, I was hurrying home to watch Don Winslow of the Coast Guard, a TV serial that portrayed the Coasties apprehending Nazi saboteurs in New York Harbor, and chasing rum runners.

I came from a nautical heritage, and my parents administered corporal punishment in the form of an oak sail batten delivered to an open palm for being insubordinate. Fortunately, by then, keel hauling had been outlawed in every Navy of the Western World, and things never got that severe for infractions within a household that lived under the "Articles of War.'

The documentary Victory at Sea was usually watched on Sundays as if it were a religious obligation. Observing the signalmen, who seemed to communicate among other ships secretly by semaphore and blinker light faster than speech allowed, always intrigued me. To me this was the ultimate cool, and I vowed to become one of them when I grew up. Never did I realize that a TV program and the "Witch of November" would have such an impact upon my life until I was into retirement.