"Retirement"

Who would'a thought twenty-three years ago I'd be sitt'n here writing Sea Stories about days gone past and a lifetime of memories in the Navy? My first six years in this ol' canoe club I would of kicked ya in the nuts and called you a fool if you told me I'd be retiring from this gig! So along with retirement comes the prospect of growing old, sitt'n around at the VFW or American Legion Hall with a bunch of other crazy ol' coots, gett'n stupid drunk and talk'n about the good ol' days on some grey hull in the South Pacific with almond eyed island girls loven me long time 'No Shit!'

Just yesterday it seems I was standing in line at the 'Great Mistakes' hotel barber shop gett'n my mullet hacked off and my nogg'n shaved to the gaudamn roots. That's after being man handled by some seventy-year ol' coot posing as a damn doctor fondling my nuts and forcing me to hop on one leg while turn'n my head to cough. Nevermind the color charts and a thousand questions about what drugs I did and who I hung out with. Anyone remember the 'Moment of Truth' in Bootcamp? You know, where they threat'n you to tell the truth about all them felonies and drugs you use to do that your recruiter told you to forget about? Yeah, the moments of yester year!

I had that salty ol' image in my head of the sailor with his ol' white hat tilted back and a pack of lucky strikes rolled up in his T-shirt sleeve, a beer in one hand and a dame in the other! Well that slowly faded away as I've gotten older too! All the damn grab ass'n we use to do to hassle some jackass for being a shitbird or the obvious sexual harassment to just about everything under this great blue sky, would be enough to make the Navy CNO's head spin these days! If we acted now like we did back then we'd all be locked up in a rubber room in every damn Naval Hospital around the country for mentally disturbing behavior too severe to ever let us out! And I'm talk'n bout 80% of the whole gaudamn fleet!

From my younger years in High School streak'n across the Publix Parking Lot with my pants around my ankles to the debauchery of Pattaya and Phuket Thailand or Olongapo in the Phillipines, I've lived a lifetime of wonderful moments that you just can't tell your kids about in a bedtime story! Yep, they're pretty much all R' rated, and I'm proud of every damned one of em'!

In those twenty-two years of Navy life it's all been pretty good to me. Along the way I learned a few things! If you work hard, and play the game, you get a shot at a lot of responsibility, if you want it! But you have to maintain some focus to stay at the top of the heap and put forth a lot of effort! You'll work for some real sons-a-bitches and you'll work for some good fellas as well! Whatever the case, it's never permanent. Some Commands are better and some worse. It's just the nature of the game! And in the end, if you stick around long enough to retire, you get a gaudamn paycheck every month until you die!

Well, I witnessed an aging practice in my younger years that had drifted away over time in this ol' canoe club. Alcohol once lubricated some of the Navy's oldest ceremonies! We made money for our coffers during the 'CPO' initiation by waiting tables for our fellow Chiefs back when I was a slug. But those days are pretty much over with the watered down PC' version of things! As a result, alcohol is no longer a sanctioned part of any Navy event. With all the tear jerking moments that some of the most touching ceremonies can bring. It would be good to down a shot or two along the way. The thirteen folds of the flag, Ol' glory, The watch, it just wouldn't be fitting without a bit of whiskey to wash it down!

What a shame... YES... what a shame it would be...but...at a retirement ceremony...it's the retiree's ceremony...what are they gonna do... make you extend for two more years??? Ol' Joe Gonzales cracked open a beer on his ceremony in 2009...I followed suite!

In 1989 I bought a classic bottle of 'Johnny Walker Swing!' This ol' bottle is made just for the nautical sailor. Bottled back in the ol' days by the Johnny Walker Scotch Distillery, the bottom of the bottle is beveled to make it rock like a pendulum on 'a ship out to sea' to keep it from tipp'n over. Supposedly it ads flavor by the continued mix of the swirl! That bottle has been sitt'n on my dresser all these years aging away and collecting dust! Well, on 1 April, 2010 I finally cracked it open...the waft of such a classic aroma, the sting on the tongue, that smokey scotch flavor on the pallet...how smooth it went down the hatch!

So I toast you all past present and future nautical dwellers of the Sea!! Down the hola Bitcholas!!!

Fair Winds' and Following Seas ...