By Lonnie Haynes (A Former Inmate of the Rock)

Dealing With Boredom

In part two of my story I related the daily life on the Rock as uneventful, dull and for the most part boring. This was a given on most every day of every week, of every month of every year and the cause of my seeking and receiving a transfer after 20 months of time spent incarcerated on the Rock. Earlier in my story I had said for the most part everyone got along quite well, which we did, there was NOTHING to argue or disagree about. The keeper Oswald was in his late 50s, the second in command was in his 40s, both were married and there wasn’t a whole lot a kid of 19 had in common with either of them, so, once we had related our backgrounds to each other and made the small talk, commentaries and appropriate responses we didn’t have a whole lot for daily discussion except for the news which we all watched as best able on our 2 channel TV set or listened to on the radio. One channel was viewable and on the other it was SNOWING! Anyone who can remember the “antennae” only TV reception, can remember SNOW, there was NO cable TV.

Being 100 miles from the TV stations and receiving ANY viewable TV was just short of a miracle in 1956. Other forms of entertainment were cards; everyone played cards, pinochle, poker, cribbage, sometimes for hours at a time. Early on in my stay at the Rock I had taken my “fiddle and guitar” to the lighthouse and having taken lessons for 5 years on the violin, it afforded me a boredom breaker as did the guitar, which I was teaching myself to play. The walls were very thick, so I disturbed no one with my HOURS of practicing. There was also an attic over the main area that had literally hundreds of magazines dating back to World War 1, and World War 2, Names like: The Saturday Evening Post, Life, Readers Digests, National Geographics and many others I had never seen or heard of before.

It was many months of this lifestyle before a change in the regimen occurred. A seaman my age was transferred to the Rock. His name was Al Richards and he had a sense of HUMOR! Finally, someone my own age who could relate to our girlfriends, music, cars parties we had gone to, etc. It was great; we shared stories of everything we had in common. Together we invented new ways to break the boredom, nothing that would be considered entertaining to someone who wasn’t bound to a ROCK two miles out in the ocean, but fun for us. Some things we did were to get on the Coast Guard radio frequency and make announcements, such as:

The aliens whose space ship just landed on the White house lawn have demanded all the earths supply of sand…OR else! Details at 11:00.

Then we would stay OFF the radio, so no one could get a “FIX” on our location. Once in awhile we would get a return comment from some “other station” a light ship, or lifeboat station, or such that would join in or add to it or just say “knock it off you guys.”

Fun With the Antenna

On one of our more inventive moments one evening about 8:00 pm Al and I were trying to watch an old movie when the second in command came in and wanted to watch his show, the “Voice of Firestone” This was classical music that two 20 year olds had NO interest in, but he had TV rights since he was now ON watch. The person on watch had the right to choose the viewing channel for his 4 hour watch period AND he had the watch at that time. After 5 minutes of “The Voice of Firestone” I looked over at Al who’s frustration level matched my own, and a light went on over my head! Al looked over at me, and saw the light bulb and a grin on my face, he knew instinctively I had hatched some devious method of entertainment. With a nod of my head towards the engine room we got up and each gave some lame excuse to the second in command that we had something else to do, Al was going to read a magazine and I had a letter to write. Outside it was dark but no severe weather and a moderate temperature. I told Al of my plan to climb to the roof top and while he watched the 2nd in command through the main window I would slowly rotate the TV antennae, which would drastically interfere with “The Voice of Firestone” viewing, then at the appropriate time I would move it back to the proper location to re establish the viewing once more, then repeat the procedure!

As Al watched the effects of antennae rotation on the 2nd in command through the window he went from a snicker to laughing out loud, at which time I gave him the signal to not laugh so loud that the 2nd in command would hear him and be on to our evening entertainment. After a few minutes of Al viewing the reactions, we traded places so I could observe the effect it was having on the man inside. Truly amazing! The 2nd in command would get visibly angry at the TV each time the rotation ruined his viewing, then he would regain his composure when it came back into focus. We must have done this for 15 minutes, but he never became suspicious or curious as to its cause and Al and I had our evenings entertainment. It is here that I will end my trip down memory lane and close my “Life on the Rock” reminiscence. In so doing I want to thank Sue Clark for the opportunity to present this glimpse of a truly historical lighthouse. There were stories Oswald Allik (Ozzie) told about happenings that he saw during his nearly 20 years on the ROCK. Stories us young men had to pry out of him like the Japanese submarine that surfaced some miles north of the Rock and fired her deck gun at Fort Stevens on the Oregon Coast. Stories about near collisions with ships that came to close to the Rock in storm weather when the light failed for a few hours and men who were killed in the construction of the lighthouse when the only way on or off was to try landing at the east end base of the rock. Many stories many years, there is a book written many years ago titled Tillamook Rock Lighthouse or just Tillamook Rock, I don’t remember which, but I had a copy at one time.

A Final Irony

In closing I will leave you with a bit of irony, one of my reasons for wanting OFF the Rock was that I was tired of wet and cold weather and had a longing for sunshine and warm, anyplace that was sunny and warm would do.

My opportunity to leave the ROCK was to come quickly as a transfer to a ship in Hawaii was available and I jumped at the chance. Within 3 weeks I was OFF the Rock and on my new duty station the US Coast Guard Buoy Tender Blackhaw in HAWAII. Finally I was WARM! Three weeks after being in Hawaii, we received directions to go to Pearl Harbor and have our hull reinforced with 1/2inch steel plating and proceed to the Arctic to break ice for the Navy on the DEW line (distant early warning) radar sites. 180 foot buoy tenders had an ice breaker bow design! So much for warm sunshine!

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At this time I want to thank Lon for sharing this wonderful story of a lost lifestyle. Preserving these memories are a must for future generations. And I’d like to share a little story Lon mailed to me, about how looking at some of the photos he sent jogged his memory about one of the crewmen who’d spent time on The Rock with him. Using this amazing resource, the world wide web, he looked him up and was able to call and reminisce about the time they shared on the Rock. I’ve used only a very few of the photos and news clippings in these stories, so be sure to check out the rest:

• Photos
• News clippings

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