Thursday, August 11, 2011

4th of July Sea Story

For any of you marvelous 'Crackerjacks' & 'Leathernecks' stationed in San Diego around 89-92... you probably remember the Red Onion at Belmont Park in Ocean Beach. 'Twas' July 4th, 1989... I was celebrating with my buddy, Ed Willis (aka Marlboro Man) and his hot girlfriend drinking 5 gallon buckets of rum and coke at a dollar a gallon. Well, being the young & robust 21 year old indestructible sailor that I thought I was... I proceeded to try and drink the table… let’s just say drinking multiple buckets of rum and coke… a major oversight on my part!!  I should'a slowed down when my buddy and his gal friend warned me. But you know us ‘Crackerjacks’...



Eventually I decided to take a stroll in the cool breeze on the beach to clear my head and as you might expect… I don’t remember much of what happened next. I do remember Ed pick’n me up and dropp’n me two or three times on the way to the car. I mumbled various words of gibberish in a not so polite manner and proceeded to hurl about two thirds of my innards all over him and his… now not so lovely gal!! I’m sure the smell and the slime were not so entertaining at that particular moment.



The next thing I remember was being put in a bathtub by both parties while gett’n stripped to my nether regions and blasted with a cold shower...  only to awake later to a brilliant shining light in which I instantly thought…



"HOLY JESUS HAVE MERCY… I must’ve died and gone to Heaven!!!"



But nooo... unfortunately I was witness to a 5:00AM sunrise glaring off the glass of the downtown San Diego high rises. Needless to say, the boat was gett'n underway at 0600 hours and I was wearing Ed’s girlfriend’s clothes while mine were being washed out. I went to wake up Ed the Marlboro Man who was abruptly interrupted butt nekkitt in bed doing the Horizontal Watusi and we scrambled to get back to the ship on time!!!



Everything was going okay. We got to the ship... ship got underway... and we were just heading out past Point Loma as the ship hit the cross currents and I sat alone in the MK 68 Director... Then it hit me... I started quivering over with the worst case of the dry heaves!!! This lasted for over an hour... It even surpassed the sea and anchor detail. One of those many instances when you tell yourself,



“I’ll never do that again!”



8 comments:

  1. BY the length of the story it looks like allot of it went unremembered into the 'ol "bit bucket" LOL!

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  2. Yep... nothing like the "Good Ole Days" Right????? Uhhhhhhh.......I don't remember.......LOL

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  3. Only had one bad case of the heaves during an OPPE inspection on the Marvy-Do (FF-1066). We got underway and I swear there was 3 foot waves in SD harbor. We hit the demarc line at Pt. Loma and turned westward towards the SoCalOpArea and our little ship was hit with 15-18 foot seas. In between plotting our position on the chart and taking hourly weather observations, I was on the starboard bridge wing throwing up whatever was or wasn't in my stomach. Luckily it was the 20-00 watch and we were scheduled to pull in late the next morning. Never did get underway three sheets to the wind, but I can barely remember what happened when we left P.I. or even Pearl during RimPac.

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  4. Something I have never understood. Why drink until you are blotto then with a hangover the next morning say what a good time you had.

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    1. The good time was the journey to that point. The part that sucked was when you got there.

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  5. When we commissioned AFS-7 at Long Beach I was supposed to hide in the forward Mk-56 director and spin it around when the flag went up. We had a division party the night before and I was just too hungover to do it - so I slept it off in the control room and joined the party a few hours later. Even got to meet DIonne Warwick (our ship was named San Jose and she "Knew the Way" but didn't even sing the song!)

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  6. God only knows how I made it back a few times, I remember absolutely nothing. Just one hell of a hangover.

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  7. We were in Hong Kong and I was to drunk to remember where the ship was and I just wanted to get back. Caught a taxi ride for what seemed like the longest two blocks of my life��

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