There’s the phrase “well read,” often used to describe someone’s intellect or mental bearing. I’ve never been comfortable applying it to myself — partly out of humility, partly because with all the possible choices out there, it seems unlikely that anyone’s reading is truly well chosen. Honestly, I’m certain most of my choices wouldn’t qualify.
I’ve sometimes called myself an eclectic reader, maybe even a schizophrenic one — or at least bi-polar. My standards are odd but consistent:
it has to be entertaining and historical; it has to be thought-provoking and bubble-gum for the mind. It’s a wide range.
Looking back, I see the most interesting result of this habit: the unexpected ways literature connects to everyday life. Many people have experienced that uncanny moment when real life echoes a scene from a book. And if you read widely, that moment keeps repeating. That, to me, is the real value of being “well read.”
One of my favorite trilogies is Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast series, the story of the Groan Dynasty, their vast castle, and the endless weight of duty, ritual, and destiny. I’m fond of all three books — though the third is one of the most bewildering I’ve read. The BBC did a fine adaptation of the first two but wisely didn’t attempt the third.
What fascinated me most was the Castle itself. It’s old, functional as a castle, but so immense that it goes on for days. Vast sections are sealed off, endless corridors lead to dust-filled, nameless rooms. It’s the perfect description of how a child experiences a large, unknowable building — except in Gormenghast, that sensation never ends, even when the child grows up. Titus Groan, the young heir, wanders through a world too big to understand.
In 1970, I was drafted by the U.S. Army, and through a bit of maneuvering, I re-enlisted in the Signal Corps to avoid being cannon fodder in Vietnam. I thought I had outsmarted the system — but you can’t really outthink the U.S. military.
I was trained to work on the hotline, maintaining the encrypted voice telephone system used by the President and military commanders worldwide. It was cool work: digital, secure, secret. As graduation neared, we speculated where we’d be sent — every military installation and embassy needed secret communications. I hadn’t realized that Vietnam itself was, of course, another “obvious” need. So much for strategy.
But I was lucky. My orders came for Fort Ritchie, Maryland. Stateside. I was relieved — but also curious. Why Fort Ritchie? Why had I never heard of it?
It turned out Fort Ritchie was two places: the surface fort in Maryland, just across the Pennsylvania border, and, two miles underground, Raven Rock — or Site R — near Gettysburg. It was the Cold War’s underground Pentagon, a secure retreat for the White House and the military brass.
I hadn’t heard of it because it was secret.
I’d seen the idea in movies — Dr. Strangelove and others — the underground command bunkers for the elite survivors, while radioactive ash swirled outside. Now I was going to live it.
My first weeks were filled with “other duties as assigned.” I learned the labyrinth: miles of empty corridors, hundreds of unoccupied living quarters, all waiting to be filled in an emergency. At any time, we staffed maybe 2% of the facility. I made a lot of beds and dusted a lot of rooms.
I worked a rotating shift: six days on, two off, cycling through days, swings, and graveyards. Weekends were rare. And of course, I worked in a cave — so “day shift” was a relative term.
I lived off-site in a trailer, but when the emergency siren sounded, I had 15 minutes to get inside. Someone had calculated that we had a 15-minute warning from Russian missiles crossing over Canada. That countdown was always in the back of my mind — especially during drills, driving toward the mountain, watching the sky for contrails.
The tunnel entrance was unforgettable. At its deepest point, a two-foot-thick steel door sealed the base. You buzzed the Marine guard, presented ID, waited as the door groaned open. Inside, you passed through an identical inner door — never open at the same time. Past that were showers to wash off nuclear ash, shelves of fresh uniforms, and the entrance to the main complex. Lakes at either end of the tunnel stored water; one even had a rowboat. The place was prepared for the end of the world.
One incident stays sharp in my mind.
I was tasked with mapping the facility’s wiring. The phones were in the right rooms, but no one was sure where the lines ran. One line led up to the sixth floor, then through the ceiling. I asked my sergeant where it went. He shrugged: “Roof.”
I had never considered that these buildings, inside the cave, had roofs.
I climbed up, tracing the conduit. The cave ceiling was low; I could stand upright only at the center. At the edge, I peered down — the building was boxed inside the cave, just feet from the rock walls.
And then, I found it:
a single wooden chair, sitting in the middle of the roof, facing nothing in particular.
Why was it there?
I sat, looking up at the rough ceiling, watching bats flicker through the light.
And then: “Freeze!”
Hatches popped open. MPs emerged, weapons raised. I had set off motion sensors over the Joint Chiefs’ War Room.
I had been in that room countless times — it had never occurred to me it had a roof.
It wasn’t just bad to be on the roof; it was worse to be sitting in the chair when they found me.
Let’s just say, it didn’t help my military career.
Years later, I searched online for Raven Rock. To my surprise, there was a fair amount of public information. One short article mentioned “a Gormenghast-like building.”
What?
Someone else had seen it too — the endless, decaying labyrinth, the building of power wrapped in empty rooms.
I tracked down the writer, and after some research, we began exchanging emails. He had been there ten years before me — one of the MPs who sprang from those hatches.
I mentioned the rooftop chair.
He wrote back, surprised:
“My chair? My chair was still there?”
He’d been stationed on the roof for weeks, guarding against possible foreign bugs, and had eventually hauled up a chair for company.
Thus the title of this reflection: Gormenghast, the Cave, and the Chair.
It’s a strange world we live in, full of vast and hidden connections.
Some are so improbable they defy calculation, yet they happen —
and often more often than we’d expect.
The MP never caught the would-be spy.
I did, ten years later.
But that’s another story.
(A reposting from 2014)
A Work Progressing 
Gormenghast, the Cave, and the Chair
There’s the phrase “well read,” often used to describe someone’s intellect or mental bearing. I’ve never been comfortable applying it to myself — partly out of humility, partly because with all the possible choices out there, it seems unlikely that anyone’s reading is truly well chosen. Honestly, I’m certain most of my choices wouldn’t qualify.
I’ve sometimes called myself an eclectic reader, maybe even a schizophrenic one — or at least bi-polar. My standards are odd but consistent:
it has to be entertaining and historical; it has to be thought-provoking and bubble-gum for the mind. It’s a wide range.
Looking back, I see the most interesting result of this habit: the unexpected ways literature connects to everyday life. Many people have experienced that uncanny moment when real life echoes a scene from a book. And if you read widely, that moment keeps repeating. That, to me, is the real value of being “well read.”
One of my favorite trilogies is Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast series, the story of the Groan Dynasty, their vast castle, and the endless weight of duty, ritual, and destiny. I’m fond of all three books — though the third is one of the most bewildering I’ve read. The BBC did a fine adaptation of the first two but wisely didn’t attempt the third.
What fascinated me most was the Castle itself. It’s old, functional as a castle, but so immense that it goes on for days. Vast sections are sealed off, endless corridors lead to dust-filled, nameless rooms. It’s the perfect description of how a child experiences a large, unknowable building — except in Gormenghast, that sensation never ends, even when the child grows up. Titus Groan, the young heir, wanders through a world too big to understand.
In 1970, I was drafted by the U.S. Army, and through a bit of maneuvering, I re-enlisted in the Signal Corps to avoid being cannon fodder in Vietnam. I thought I had outsmarted the system — but you can’t really outthink the U.S. military.
I was trained to work on the hotline, maintaining the encrypted voice telephone system used by the President and military commanders worldwide. It was cool work: digital, secure, secret. As graduation neared, we speculated where we’d be sent — every military installation and embassy needed secret communications. I hadn’t realized that Vietnam itself was, of course, another “obvious” need. So much for strategy.
But I was lucky. My orders came for Fort Ritchie, Maryland. Stateside. I was relieved — but also curious. Why Fort Ritchie? Why had I never heard of it?
It turned out Fort Ritchie was two places: the surface fort in Maryland, just across the Pennsylvania border, and, two miles underground, Raven Rock — or Site R — near Gettysburg. It was the Cold War’s underground Pentagon, a secure retreat for the White House and the military brass.
I hadn’t heard of it because it was secret.
I’d seen the idea in movies — Dr. Strangelove and others — the underground command bunkers for the elite survivors, while radioactive ash swirled outside. Now I was going to live it.
My first weeks were filled with “other duties as assigned.” I learned the labyrinth: miles of empty corridors, hundreds of unoccupied living quarters, all waiting to be filled in an emergency. At any time, we staffed maybe 2% of the facility. I made a lot of beds and dusted a lot of rooms.
I worked a rotating shift: six days on, two off, cycling through days, swings, and graveyards. Weekends were rare. And of course, I worked in a cave — so “day shift” was a relative term.
I lived off-site in a trailer, but when the emergency siren sounded, I had 15 minutes to get inside. Someone had calculated that we had a 15-minute warning from Russian missiles crossing over Canada. That countdown was always in the back of my mind — especially during drills, driving toward the mountain, watching the sky for contrails.
The tunnel entrance was unforgettable. At its deepest point, a two-foot-thick steel door sealed the base. You buzzed the Marine guard, presented ID, waited as the door groaned open. Inside, you passed through an identical inner door — never open at the same time. Past that were showers to wash off nuclear ash, shelves of fresh uniforms, and the entrance to the main complex. Lakes at either end of the tunnel stored water; one even had a rowboat. The place was prepared for the end of the world.
One incident stays sharp in my mind.
I was tasked with mapping the facility’s wiring. The phones were in the right rooms, but no one was sure where the lines ran. One line led up to the sixth floor, then through the ceiling. I asked my sergeant where it went. He shrugged: “Roof.”
I had never considered that these buildings, inside the cave, had roofs.
I climbed up, tracing the conduit. The cave ceiling was low; I could stand upright only at the center. At the edge, I peered down — the building was boxed inside the cave, just feet from the rock walls.
And then, I found it:
a single wooden chair, sitting in the middle of the roof, facing nothing in particular.
Why was it there?
I sat, looking up at the rough ceiling, watching bats flicker through the light.
And then: “Freeze!”
Hatches popped open. MPs emerged, weapons raised. I had set off motion sensors over the Joint Chiefs’ War Room.
I had been in that room countless times — it had never occurred to me it had a roof.
It wasn’t just bad to be on the roof; it was worse to be sitting in the chair when they found me.
Let’s just say, it didn’t help my military career.
Years later, I searched online for Raven Rock. To my surprise, there was a fair amount of public information. One short article mentioned “a Gormenghast-like building.”
What?
Someone else had seen it too — the endless, decaying labyrinth, the building of power wrapped in empty rooms.
I tracked down the writer, and after some research, we began exchanging emails. He had been there ten years before me — one of the MPs who sprang from those hatches.
I mentioned the rooftop chair.
He wrote back, surprised:
He’d been stationed on the roof for weeks, guarding against possible foreign bugs, and had eventually hauled up a chair for company.
Thus the title of this reflection: Gormenghast, the Cave, and the Chair.
It’s a strange world we live in, full of vast and hidden connections.
Some are so improbable they defy calculation, yet they happen —
and often more often than we’d expect.
The MP never caught the would-be spy.
I did, ten years later.
But that’s another story.
(A reposting from 2014)
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