Urban Legends

One sunny day this past summer, while my son and I were segwaying around the Napa Mill, we met this interesting older gentleman.  He was walking with his coffee from Sweetie Pies, we were on our way to the Napa General Store.  My youngest  son will talk to just about anyone -so as I glided past,  James stopped to chat.  I heard the end of a tale about a river monster- and asked him to explain.  Well, the second story he told was even more intriguing.

The man was all dressed in black, from his shoes to his hat.  He had a little goatee and a small mustache- gray and trimmed.  He began his story in a gravely voice, which added to the suspense:

PT109  JFK

There was once an old man, who had some property across the river from where the mill is located.  He had his own dock.  His hair was long and gray, with a scraggly long gray beard.  Every day, he would get up in the morning and sit on his dock, with his handmade sign PT109-JFK.  He was just about the right age - he could've been on the boat with John F. Kennedy before the Japanese destroyer cut it in two.  All but two men on the boat survived.

Rumor has it that the old man was one of those survivors, and each day he would sit on his dock with his sign, waiting for the boat to pick him up.

One day - during one of Napa's famous "100-year-flood"s, the old man's dock was washed away, along with his ratty sign.  The man was distraught without his dock.  The neighbors felt bad about this, and rebuilt his dock, and made him a beautiful new sign.  The next day you could see him once again, sitting on his dock, holding his sign "PT109- JFK".

Napa is famous, too, for its early morning dense fog.  The grapes love it J  Before the river project, when the river was narrower -the fog was thicker.  One such morning, our gentleman story teller remembers hearing a low rumble sound just before dawn , just like that of a PT boat- curious, he opened his door to one of the thickest fogs he had ever seen.  He started down the stairs and realized he couldn't even see the bottom, so would have to wait for the fog to burn off.  Hours later, he made his way to the banks of the river and looked across, only to find an empty dock.  The old man with his new sign were gone - never to be seen again.

To read more about PT109- click here

Ensign Leonard J.Thorn

Gunner's Mate 2/c Charles A. Harris,

Motor Machinist's Mate 2/c Leon E. Drawdy

Motor Machinist's Mate 2/c Edmund T. Drewitch.

Gunner's Mate 3/c Maurice L. Kowal

Torpedoman 2/c Andrew Jackson Kirksey

Radioman 2/c John E. Maguire,

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