‘Phrases and Things They Never Told You’

Before I entered the ol’ Canoe Club, there were a number of things I'd never heard of… During my enlistment, that list grew. One thing being a Crackerjack taught me… sure was a hell of a lot of ‘slang’ out there a kid never knew and a kid usually hears them all.

There were things they didn't tell you. Things like whether or not they’d be putting Saltpeter in the food when we got to Boot Camp to stifle the ol’ libido… or the moment of truth when they’d call your happy ass out for smoking all that wacky weed your recruiter told you to lie about… and several other thrilling adventures the devil and the US Navy combined talents to bring you.

I think the first reception I had to acronyms was the gaudamned word itself… Navy… ‘Never Again Volunteer Yourself’ or ‘Need Any Vaseline Yet’??? And that was before I got on the bus…

Then it was off to Great Lakes, more commonly referred to Great Mistakes by all the Crackerjacks in the area.  Making matters worse… all those Red Rope wear’n sons-a-bitches kept calling me Ricky!!

“Who the hell is Ricky and I ain’t carry’n no gaudamned Irish pennant… so what’s your beef?”

Then those same gaudamned Red Rope wear’n sons-a-bitches kept referring to my ‘Dick Skinners, ‘Dick Beaters’, and Meathooks!!!  I mean, what the hell gives…

The next morning… Bam!! Clang!! Dunga.. Dunga.. Dunga!!! The sound of a stainless steel trash can roll’n down the passageway between the racks…

“Drop your Cocks and grab your socks.. It’s reveille!!!”

Then it was nutt to butt… chest pressed to the back of the man ahead!!! Boy I started having second thoughts about that ‘soap on a rope’ my buddy Joe was tell’n me about before I left…

Subsequently after a hard day of marching, physical stress, and gett’n your ass handed to you by a gaudamned five’ foot noth’n Fillipino Red Roper spitt’n out his teeth… It was time for a Pump and Dump… a short five minutes to sit on the shitter and do your business if needed… but it was rarely long enough!!!

This was a situation to take issue with… usually meant that sorry son-of-a-bitch better not leave his coffee cup alone in his office for too long… he might get a little ‘Dirty-Dick’ on the rim!! Nothing like the taste of genitalia early in the morning to make your coffee sweet!!!

By the time I finished Boot Camp it was off across the street to Firecontrol ‘A’ School… by then I had learned a new acronym ‘FTN’ that would be F@#K The Navy for all you more settle readers out there. I think I learned this reading off a shitter door as it was wittled into the paint… probably by a disgruntled Crackerjack with the unfortunate task of clean’n the shitters and pissers.

 Then there was the little thing about ‘A’ School called Electronics… or in my case it was all ‘PFM’ or ‘Pure F@#K’n Magic’… Let’s begin with NPN, PNP, Mono-stable.. Bi-stable.. and Multi-stable Vibrators!!! I thought a guadamned vibrator was something a young gal used for self pleasure… but what the hell did I know at nineteen years of age…

Then there was the food… the most common might be the bug juice and panther piss… noth’n more than a variety ‘o’ flavors of generic kool-aid with enough gaudamned acid in it to eat away the oxidation on the steel head of an anchor!!

Then there was Geedunk for candy and soda… Horse Cock for large logs of bologna or kielbasa… S.O.S. ‘Shit on a Shingle’ for braised beef and gravy… Roast Beast for any unidentifiable meat… Rollers… Hockey Pucks… Trail Markers… Porcupines… Sliders… Flight Deck Buzzard, for any unidentifiable bird… and best of all ‘The Big Nasty’… your typical boxed banquet during Combat Quarters or ‘GQ’ to give you a good gut wrench for three or four hours… then it was another twenty or thirty minutes on the shitter read’n ‘FTN’ wittled on the walls again after securing from ‘GQ’… 

But I couldn’t conveniently leave out the nicknames of the ships… such as my first moniker… ‘The Baglady’ for the USS Bagley… or the ‘Chucky V’ for the USS Carl Vinson… what about the ‘Shitty Kitty’ for the USS Kitty Hawk… or the Stink’n Lincoln’ derogatory for the USS Abraham Lincoln. 

Along with those, nicknames carried on to the bases we home ported as well… ‘No F@#K Vagina’… ‘San Dog’ 32nd Street… along with ‘Chula Juana & Nasty City’… or ‘Penis Anus Naval Shipyard’ in Bremerton, Washington home of the Bremeloes… or overseas in ‘Gerbil Alley’ where it smells like goat ass in the hot Middle Eastern desert…

What's more, our lives wouldn’t be the same in our monotonous existence underway without our own taglines such as Turd Chaser… Skivvy Waiver… Sparky… Pecker Checker (also) Penis Machinist… Deck Apes… Gun Monkeys… Twidgets & Snipes… and many others as the list never ends… 

They also failed to mention water hours… Port & Report Watch Standing… and the constant smell of stinky feet and Walrus sing-a-longs in berthing… but that was covered in another story…

And worst of all, no one mentioned that Chief Petty Officers had no Gaudamned Sense of Humor…

Sons-a-Bitches…