“Shark Bait’n Tomfoolery”

Life on an 800 foot, grey hulk of metal circling around in the ocean was rarely exciting. You created your fun when you could. Stupid stunts, mischief-making and collaborated razz were an important part of keeping the monotony from coming to a boiling point around the bend. You had to have been there to fully appreciate the life we lived.

Vast periods underway could present itself with long stretches of near catatonic boredom. At such times you could actually hear the hair follicles grow & spider web construction racket. On Rainier, the unkempt castaways filled these relatively inactive times with correspondence letter writing, pornographic literature, skylark’n and plotting complicated shenanigans. Some of the hoax & hijinx aboard the ol’ No 7 took days to brood & nurture.

Of all the ambassadors of wisecracks and witticisms racked in the berthings and smoke deck, the Grand Wizard of Tomfoolery, Brett Mullins, was the resident prime minister and deceptive fabricator of flim-flam, fraud and cock-&-bull story tell’n.

He would reel off more about his involvement in this adolescent bullshit but his memories are worn from all the fool’s errand pranks and cheats he had been accustomed to over the years.

You see in Deck Department there was this Seaman Recruit fresh out of the belly of “Great Mistakes,” that would be boot camp to you landlubbers, just checked onboard and asking for some special attention in the area of hoodwink’n horseplay! He wasn’t the brightest of the bunch and so the story goes with a newbie, in the likes of 100 yards of gigline, the BT punch, Bearing grease for the TACAN, batteries for the sound powered phones or my personal favorite of blowing the MPA and countless others I’m sure you fool hardy enough to thunkem up!

You see Mr Mullins found it quite important to send this young lad looking for a double edged boot knife so that he could properly conduct a “shark watch” off the port bow and that he needed to be sure to deliver a lethal blow if one attacked the ship. This young lad surely wasn’t dealing with a full deck! Needless to say, Mullins went back to the mess decks never to think of it again and finish his winning game of spades as our young underling was wearily headed to the bridge for further instruction from the Boatswains Mate of The Watch. This so happened to be Brad Wilson who further agitated the situation I am sure with a few more tugs and quips at the young feller to make him feel welcomed on deck.

Once again as you could only imagine, Mullins woke up the next morning only to hear the Chief Hoot’n & Holler’n about his antics as thoughts of being keelhauled ran through his melon over and over again. I think each time I hear another story about you Brett, “Keelhaulin” seems to become a Colloquialism.

So once again another Navy Snipe Hunt, Goose Chase, practical joke in the likes of M.A.S.H., McHale’s Navy and many other sitcoms on television we got to experience in the real life Navy. What a life we lived…I’ll be sure to miss it in the next few months when I grow some hair so I can let it down and bask in my retirement!!