‘ Liberty Expires With Breathalyzers ‘

A while ago I posted a snippet called ‘Operation Golden Flow’ about piss tests and exactly just how I’d felt about ‘em… So as recently as a few months ago the ‘Navy Times’ posted an article stating that the good ol’ SECNAV is planning on introducing the breathalyzer to the fine young men and women of the US ‘Canoe Club’… ain’t that a bunch a hooey!!!

It defies the whole point of why young men join the ‘Canoe Club’ in the first place… It’s not just a job… but where’s the sense of adventure?!?

Not too many moons ago we ‘Crackerjacks’ congregated in some of the best gin mills around the world!! They had great names… The Red Onion, El Caminos, Moose McGillicuttys', Tremors, Shenanigans, Jose Murphy’s, Bull and Bear Pub, Sticky Wicket, … and of course I can’t forget to mention Club Metro, San Diego Sports Bar, Cankers and Sores, Trophy Lounge and the infamous ‘Pink Panther’ in Phuket or ‘Caligula’s’ in Pattaya Beach Thailand!! But if you want to go there we could also talk about all the bars on Magsaysay in Olongapo… but I don’t want to write a novel here so we’ll stick to the simple subject… These were anything from dingy hole in the wall joints to pick up stations for the local one night stands… ‘like a sore dick… they just couldn’t be beat!!’

Sometimes it’d be a challenge to find the trashiest & cheapest joint to drink beer and get ‘Flammered’! We’d toss down stuff like ‘Tiger Beer’ that tasted more like Tiger Piss!! Then we’d sit around discussing women’s boob sizes and tell semi-coherent jokes until we laughed so gaudamned hard beer would spew outta’ our noses!!!

There was nothing like a bunch’a bleary eyed sons-a-bitches heading back to the ship ripping three sheets to the wind and pee’n in the street!!!

“I gotta piss so damn bad it feels like I’m gonna give birth to a urine child!”

“I guess your well overdue for a piss call!!”

Then while piss’n away in the alley…

“Hey look… I’m Zorro… oh nevermind… that’s an eight… oops I dribbled down my leg!”

“My liver’s so shot I’m gonna have to go to the hospitipal and get on the liver waiting list!!”

“Haha… when we get home I’m gonna get me a dog and name it liver so I can abuse it!!”

Yes the shit we do and say when we’re soberly challenged!!!

At the ‘Fleet Landing’ a flask of the finest spirits being passed about while telling tall tales of the Suzie Wong Red Light district in wait of the liberty boat coming inbound … That’s what it was all about… ever wonder if one of them dollar bills in your back pocket was stuck in one of them Go-Go girls butt cracks?!?  Aaaah… memories so long ago but so vivid like they just happened yesterday!! I can still remember waking up once with my head buried in a trash can… finding sharpy writing pointing toward my ass crack on my lower back…

“For a good time enter here!”

Took a couple of days for that to wear off… and a couple of months to live it down!! But it always made you as anxious as a little kid on Christmas Morning… to get ready for the next Liberty Port!!!

We’d pull into exotic banana booby seaports only seen in ‘National Geographic’ where the only passport to freedom was a pocket full of cash and a Military issued I.D. Card…

 “I can't wait to toss down some suds and get wrapped around some big tittied local girl who don’t know any better!”

“Yeah, but if you pick one up around here she could probably suck start a Chevy Truck! Lord knows if you kiss her you might as well be sucking off the whole gaudamned fleet!”

“Hey, sometimes your drunk… with beer goggles on… and that my friend… is not love!!”

Then Chief would step in…

“Boys… try to be weary of the Bearded Clam on the half skivvy... and grab one of them ‘goodyears’  dock leaves on the Quarterdeck… I’m sure he doesn’t wanna be staring down your piss holes on the way out of port!!”

Because back in those days Chief wasn’t afraid to tell you how it was… we took care of our own! Didn’t have to worry about gett’n kicked out for an alcohol related incident less you pissed yourself in the gutter every time we pulled into port!! We could figure out the ones who couldn’t hack it… it wasn’t rocket science!!!

Nowadays they’ve taken away the ability to keep everything within the ‘lifelines’ of the ship… Too gaudamned many ‘Dudley Doorites’ enforcing policy!!!

As a Chief I once had to tell a young’n something of the effect…

"Son… if you drink too much they’ll call you a drunk!  If you eat too much they’ll put you on mando and call you a fat ass!! If you fuck too much you’ll get the clap and they’ll call you a pervert… and if you work too much you’re simply a butt puckering Asshole!!! Keep everything in moderation… everything in moderation."

But back when I was a young ‘boot’ this ol’ Canoe Club was a 600 ship Navy and we were Masters of the Seas… we had achieved Superiority of the Sea Lanes… no one would jack with us!!!

This Canoe Club required you to pursue as much pussy as you could use up and drink as much beer as you could before you die!!  To serve your country was to be a warrior… a gaudamned hardass… ‘Billy’ badass… work hard, drink hard, play hard to the extreme ‘take it to the limit’ kind’a trooper!!!

I guess the Politics of ‘Political Correctness’ has forced us to treat our young men and women in uniform like a bunch of ‘gaudamned wussies’… and if you treat them like wussies they’ll become a bunch’a wussies!!!

I read somewhere that when a lady complained to President Lincoln that General Grant drank too much whiskey he replied…

“He’s successful… find out what kind of whiskey he drinks and I’ll send a barrel to all the rest of my Generals…”

My how things have changed over the years!! When I was a young’n I saw chicken fights… dog fights… bull fights… a drunk chief half nekkit try’n to get into a bull fight… peso shows… donkey shows… vagina darts… a go-go dancer swallow an eel & not with her mouth either… and the things done by strippers with ping pong balls that would make the Chinese ping pong Olympic team feel novice!!! 

And if you tried the next morning to play Limp Dick and Lazy… There was a reason the Chief used to say…

“If you’re gonna hoot with the owls at night… be prepared to soar with the eagles in the morn’n!”

After all… there was noth’n like the Section Leader having you knuckle bust’n bilges and standing ‘Drunk Watches’ at ‘O’ dark thirty the next evening!! It usually took nothing more than a steel toe boondocker in the ass and a promise you’d be stuck mess cranking ‘til hell freezes over if you didn’t get your shit together!!!

I don’t know… for better or for worse it is what it is… but as long as there are American ‘Crackerjacks’ roaming the seven seas… there will always be a market for sexy women and Piss brand beer!!!

Next on the list… the polygraph tests and ‘Spanish Inquisition’ type purification programs… kind’a make us all Leave it to Beaver types…

“Golly gee Wally… I’d never look at nekkit gurlie magazines or drink anything that smells like turpentine!!”

I’ve got visions of Stanley Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange coming on…

'After The Surgery'

After a long night of making love with a local liberty bunny, a Sailor notices a photo of another man on her nightstand by the bed. He begins to worry.

"Is this your husband?"

… he nervously asks.

"No, silly,"

… she replies, snuggling up to him.

"Your boyfriend, then?"

… he continues.

"No, not at all,"

…she says, nibbling away at his ear.

"Is it your dad or your brother?"

… he inquires, hoping to be reassured.

"No, no, no!!!"
 

… she answers.

"Well, who is he, then?"

… he demands .

"That's me before the surgery."

Many times in the Navy I felt like one of these would be have been quite appropriate!!!

‘From Radio Shack To Internet Café’

In life there’s an evolution to the whole shebang. Over time, things progress… they become more refined and defined. Back when I was a young ‘Crackerjack’ in this ol’ Canoe Club… if you smoked you had an ashtray on your desk… now you get treated like a leper and shunned from normal society!! In earlier times they collected enemy intelligence and analyzed it… then called the enemies Reds and Commies!! Now they collect your piss and analyze it and act like Reds and Commies!!!

Yes things have changed over the years… not sure for the worse or the better… but I can surely remember how important mail call was back in the day!  Mail was the singular lifeline that linked us to the real outside world!! It took weeks… sometimes months to reach us… usually sporadic at best, but it was special… one of the most important parts of daily life!! It could be tough being away from Momma back home… or that sweet ‘Suzie Rotten Crotch’... but we also had radio!!!

The Radio Shack was like ‘Grand Central Station' for information exchange. It was usually a tiny locked up spook chamber full of transmitters & receivers allowing long & short range communications… and other than ‘Snail Mail’… it was our only link to the civilized world!!!

And those sons-a-bitches hated it when anyone came to the door… it was like a big secret squirrel cage!!! Every time you’d buzzed the door some arrogant little ‘RMSN’ son-of-a-bitch answered with a smug attitude like his time was too gauddamned important to be screwed with!!!

If you were lucky enough to get a ticket in you might witness some ‘Sparky’ listen’n to ‘something’ with a set of headphones…

“Whadd’ya listening too?”

 The smart ass response would be...

"If I tell ya I’d have to kill ya!!!"

If you were chums with one of the radioman, you could get the scores before they got posted… this might be favorable for placing bets… but don’t ever get caught!!!

Yep… ‘Sparky’ or ‘Sparks’ was the endearing name given to Radiomen back in the day stemming from when Noah navigated the Ark!!!

Back in the day radiomen usually lay hidden in the ol’ Radio Shack never to be seen for work’n parties… Sea-n-Anchor details… Berthing Cleaners or anything that required gett’n dirty or break’n a sweat!! I never saw one of them sons-a-bitches runn’n to get radio traffic or pick up their guard mail!! Hell… as a Chief Section Leader I had to pull teeth to get one to stand watch on the Quarter Deck… but I digress!!!

Way back when… and this is a no shitter… we had what were known as ‘Family Grams’ that came from Radio! These were short messages from sweet ‘Betty Lou’ over the radio system to let you know she was still thinking of you!! Usually ‘Flagged’ for content… these messages were brief and often didn’t allow for much!!!

‘Sparky’ screened the notes for overly sexualized script… or anything that might send a ‘Crackerjack’ already tanked on Xanex or Prozac from jump’n ship!!! We wouldn’t wanna get the obligatory ‘Dear John’ letter in the mix!!!

But some of these Gems were quite ingenious to say the least… an A+ for creativity that’s for damned sure… Here’s a few that I’ve conjured up through e’mails and remarks from fellow bloggers…

“Watching the dog bury his bone in the yard; can’t wait for you to get home and bury yours.”

or…

“Curly and the twins miss you!”

or…

“Red River Flowing, no need to worry!!”

or…

“Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, I sure miss your candlestick!!!”

Would’a never figured any of those would’ve passed screening, but shit happens…

I heard of another instance where a lonely wife had sent a series of Family Grams… Her first message read…

 “Uncle Harry is lonely!”

The Sparky who delivered it was probably think’n… ‘Who the hell cares if Uncle Harry is lonely’…  But apparently Uncle Harry was code for the ol’ ‘Bearded Oyster’ hiding under her panties… had the young Sparky known he surely would’a spread it around the ship like wild fire!! The next message read…

 “I think uncle Harry is going to be sick.”

Then came…

“I think uncle Harry is going to die.”

At that point the young wife received a phone call and an appointment to visit the Base Chaplain! On her way there her mind raced… Had the ship sunk… Was her husband hurt… Was she gonna be a widow at such a young age???

She was ushered into the chaplain’s office and seated across a large desk from the fully uniformed Chaplain with crosses on his collar. She was frightened… ready to cry… prep’n to morn!! Then the Chaplain said…

 “Ma’am… We’re very concerned about your Uncle Harry.”

She didn’t know to laugh or cry to hide from embarrassment. I think her response as she all but ran from the office was…

“He got better!!!”

So for the short term it was either that or the whole MARS communications setup where you could over…  Roger… & Out your wife!! But noth’n very personal or tantalizing could be said with the Commo standing right over your shoulder!!! But those days are all but over…

Now Family Grams and MARS have all but died out in the ol’ Canoe Club… all to be replaced by the digital age of E’mails and Cellphones!! Nowadays these young’ns can partake in decisions as simple as what brand of toilet paper to wipe their ass with on the home front!! Hell now all these young whippersnappers have to complain about is how long the internet is gonna be down… Can you imagine that?? We’d wait six weeks at times for a piece of snail mail and now they’re suffer’n from a couple of hours of internet withdraws!!! We used to leave the family issues behind while we concentrated on the ol’ mission… now these kids get a pack of Xanex for going a day without ‘Facebook’ or e’mail!! I wonder how many grievances the CMEO gets ‘cause his Chief wouldn’t let him check his internet before going on watch?!?!

Yes… we live in a world of instant gratification!! Back when I was a young’n we had to play cards… read  book… watch the same gaudamned movie for the thirtieth time!! Now they just go to the ship’s library now referred to as the ‘Underway Internet Café!! I think they need one of them metal signs… ‘Starbucks not Available’!!!

But I still remember look’n back to when we had to sit around and wait for our names to be ‘Hollered’ out at mail call… and the perfumed letters with lipstick that made Gun Plot smell like a whore house!!!

And radio?!?! Now Sparky’s called an ‘IT’ (Internal Communications Techie)… I remember they never let us in the secret squirrel cage back in the day… but as a Tomahawk Tech I practically lived in radio when sett’n up for MDUs and AEHF!! Those Sparky’s just couldn’t stand it… kind’a like I was stepp’n in on their turf!!!

Yep, life is easier for the young ‘Crackerjack’ these days… Back in my day we had to go to sea uphill both ways… through thorn bushes… nekkit in a hale storm… Hahaha… the simple pleasures of life… those wonderful memories keep rushing back into my head!!!

Over Twenty Years of mostly Peacetime Steaming... I never stood Condition 5 steaming... that in itself is a Pipedream!!!

‘Chicken Wire Canoe and DRB Too’

When I first put on Khakis… one of the most poignant writings in my charge book was written by a Gunnersmate Chief who said and I quote…

“Listen… in your first few months at a new command you’ll be part of the solution! After that, if you hadn’t figured out how fucked up things are… you’re part of the problem!”

Years later I’d realized that might have been the best advice I’d ever gotten! And no matter what anyone says… some people including Officers and Chiefs are gauddamned idiots!! And one thing I learned along the way is not to argue with a gauddamned idiot… because they will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience!!!

I think maybe it was Einstein… hell I don’t know who said it… that ‘Ignorance replicates itself at the speed of light, But enlightenment is a very slow process’… or in laments terms… ‘Some peoples mooring lines don’t quite reach the dock!!!’

Well, on my very first ship after donning the fouled anchors, I must’ve struck ‘Gold’ ‘cause I ended up on the Good Ship Momsen that would soon hit the ‘Navy Times’ with the headlines of Booze, Babes, Bullets & Drugs!!!

You’d a figured there would’ve been a few cases of the ol’ sausage and donut situation considering the fact we’d just commissioned the ‘Love Boat’ of sorts… at least a few of the gauddamned crusty bastard khakis onboard thought so anyway… while slipp’n the unauthorized crusty old pork spear through the junior panty hamster!!!

But hell what do you expect when you plant a bunch’a ol’ goats going through midlife crisis in hotel rooms next to lil’ miss ‘paddle the pink canoe’ looking to advance under extraordinary circumstances… not only that, separate them all from their husbands, wives and hometown sweethearts for eighteen months or more!! I guess the rake was in the shed but they were miss’n their hoes!! Not that I’m condoning it… just say’n we’re noth’n but mammals… doing it like they do on the Discovery Channel    

One of the first cases of silliness I’d run across was in the Atrium Hotel Brunswick, Maine!  After a night of drunkenness with a few fellow Chiefs I’d hit my rack but not long before the hotel ‘fire alarm’ had gone off!!!

Everyone rushed out the exit doors and being recognized as a senior member of the crew, I was approached by the hotel manager (with a caddy and annoying tone)…

“Excuse me Sir but this gentleman here you will find is the cause of this debacle. He clearly has injured his hand from breaking the glass to the fire alarm and plainly admits to doing so as well! I expect you will take care of this problem or we’ll have to press charges for the false fire alarm!” 

“Sure… I’ll handle it. Thank you for bringing it to my attention!”

And there stood one of the ships freshly minted Firemen straight outta Damage Control ‘A’ School with a bloody hand and drunk as hell…

“Chief I was just doing what I was taught in ‘A’ school… to pull the actuator in case of a fire!”

This boy was a few cards short of a full deck…

“Son… just go straight to your room we’ll have this discussion with your Chief tomorrow!!”

The next day sure as shit I snatched his ass up and took him straight to his Chief… the DCC!!! After a few explicative words and a discussion about how screwed up the night was before his Chief calls him into his room…

“Have a seat!”

“I’d rather stand!”

It’s not a fuck’n invitation… Sit the fuck down before I knock you down! I Have a very important question… please tell me… cause I’m just sooo curious to find out… what the fuck was going on in your head?!?! Are you always this fucked up or are you try’n to amuse me!?!?

“Sorry Chief... I was just try’n to set off the sprinkler sytem!!!”

“YOU DUMB FUCK!” Why the hell would you do that?!?”

“Well the fire alarm was already sounding and I thought if I pulled the actuator it would set off the sprinklers!!!”

“You shit head… I swear your daddy jacked off in a flower pot and  a bloom’n idiot was born!!!”

Come to find out the lil’ fellar wasn’t lying… some other dumbass idiot later confessed to pulling the prank and this kid was just try’n to do the right thing!!! Doesn’t that make you feel like a real dumbass!!!

But I gotta tell you… sitt’n at the Disciplinary Review Boards, (DRB) it just got dumber and dumber along the way!!!

The DRB serves a couple of purposes… one usually is to define the discrepancy of a young shipmate and come up with ways to unfuck them… Especially if they’re eighteen year old idiots about as squared away as hammered dogshit!!!  The other is to recommend to the Skipper what kind of punishment should be given to this idiot or just give’m a ration of shit at our level if it’s not too serious an offense!!!

Usually the Board consists of three to four Chiefs and the Master-at-Arms forming them up outside the ‘Goatlocker’!! As the Chiefs involved walk into the mess…

“What is this… a social goat fuck? Form the fuck up!”

“Holy Shit I'm glad this isn’t a timed evolution you’re moving slower than old people fuck!!”

I remember a young Personelman coming to DRB after telling the Chief why he got the shit beat out of ‘em at the local ferry!! Senior Chief Smalley, head of the board, was all in his shit…

“What were you doing hanging out at the Ferry?”

“I was looking for meth…”

“What the FUCK… Are you Cranio-rectally inverted?!? Are you that stupid to come in here and tell us…???”

“I was just try’n to find a way to get kicked out of the Navy?”

I didn't know whether to shit or go blind, so I closed one eye and farted… I just couldn’t believe what was coming outta this kid’s mouth!!!

“Son… didn’t you ever hear that life’s a bitch? ‘Cause if it was a slut… it would be easy!!!”

Needless to say he was gone in less than a week!

Then there was the fool who tried to play ‘Shoot ‘em up Cowboy’ at the local barracks one night over a female shipmate… Apparently at the ship’s Christmas Party he decided to chase her down and catch her in the act with another shipmate in her barracks room!! When he got there he blew a hole through the door of her room with a 9MM!!!

“What the fuck were you thinking?”

“Senior Ch… Ch… Chief, I j,j,j… just got d,d,d… drunk and lost my mind…”

“Your fuck’n right about that… and watching you stutter is like watching a monkey eat a banana and fuck a football at the same time!! You should be a gauddamned poster child for a prophylactic because your about as useless as a set of tits on a nun!!!”

Then of course was the First Class weasel who’d turned himself in for having Porn Addiction… This was right before the ITs were about to do a security sweep on the ship’s NPRNet look’n for malware and porn surfed up on the ol’ internet…

This fella was probably the most worthless piece of skin God ever wrapped around an asshole! We didn’t even get to take him to DRB because he had to go out on a Psych Evaluation… and as a fellow Firecontrolman I recommended to his Chief he should write in his eval…

“Strives for mediocrity seldom achieving adequate results!!”

The guy was about ‘Three Hundred Pounds’ of Bullshit stuffed in a ‘Hundred and Fifty’ Pound Bag!!!

“FC1… You should really get some smiley face stickers and start practicing how to say Welcome to Walmart… because your ass doesn’t belong in this man’s Navy… You’ve got about as much integrity as a Chicken Wire Canoe!!!"

I don’t have a problem with somebody who looks at porn… but the squirrelly ass pussy could’ve at least had the decency to stick around and take his lumps!!!

But my favorite one of all time had to be Fireman Rich… He beat up a couple of ‘preppy college boys’ for being a bunch’a smartasses at a party!!!

“Rich… What the fuck were you thinking?”

“Well Chief, if a person wants to whine and act like a Bitch… he’s eventually gonna get slapped around like one!!!”

Of course we told him to firmly grab his shoulders and pull his head from his ass ‘cause that’s what we were supposed to do… but he got off pretty light considering those arrogant assholes probably got what was coming to ‘em!!!

Yes… we saw all kinds in front of us at DRB… some inane, and some downright ridiculous! My advice to any young ‘Crackerjack’ going to the Board… a little story, and it goes like this…

One cold day, a little bird… don’t know what kind, it doesn’t fucking matter… fell out of its nest and got cold. While the bird cried about the cold, a cow walked by. The cow felt sorry for the bird, so it turned around and… ‘PLOP’… dropped a steaming pile of shit on the bird. After a while the bird started getting hot and started crying again. Then a fox walked by and heard the little bird. He plucked the bird out of the cow shit, brushed it off and popped it into his mouth and ate it… And you see the moral of this story is this…

‘WHEN YOU'RE UP TO YOUR NOSE IN SHIT, KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT!’

But then again you know what they say about making shinola from shit… Their ain’t no way you can polish a turd… no way no how!!!

Funny the Irony: Back in the day we used to call the urinal deodorizors 'Officer Cakes'...

‘What Comes Around Goes Around’

You know what they say about ‘Karma’ being a bitch… ‘What comes around goes around’… and that’s the death defying truth when you’d been there done that and been on both ends of the stick from chambray wear’n ‘Crackerjack Recruit’ to shit colored khaki wear’n Chief Petty Officer!!

 

Yes, I had my share of shenanigans as a young ‘Crackerjack’ and never regretted a gauddamned one of them! So it’s no wonder I had to take a round turn and give myself a silent chuckle every time one of my junior cohorts got caught up in a little bit-o-horseplay along the way… but in the name of leadership and doing the right thing I still had to give the ol’ proverbial ‘Foot up the Ass’ bit!! Not to be hypocritical… but to teach them not to make the same damned mistakes I had made along the way!!!

From the beginning I was accosted for starting a pillow fight in ‘Bootcamp’ at O’dark thirty with our fellow sister company… only to find that nobody would point the finger as my Company Commander just glared and said…

“Recruit… I’m about to do an unnatural sex act on your ass if you don’t tell me who started this shindig!”

I just stood there at attention not say’n a word!!!

Then there was the time a fellow shipmate was doing the hazmat inventory of our Hazmat Locker and asked about some unlabeled needle gun lubricants and grease gun… I told him it was PU-55-Y lubricant and I-D-10-T Grease!! About a week later Chief did a spot check…

“Who the fuck wrote Pussy Lube and Idiot Grease on this Gauddamned Hazmat list!”

Holy Shit skins!!! I knew I was up shit creek with a broken paddle!!!

“Uuuh, Chief… That’s my fault. I told FC3 to write that… I didn’t think…”

“You’re Gauddamned right you didn’t think! Swing… you’re a stick!”

Me puzzled…

“Huh??”

“Wanna know what kind’a stick you are?”

“???”

“A FUCK STICK!!!” 

I guess I had that one coming…

As a recruiter I was driven to do whatever possible to advertise for the ‘Canoe Club’… sometimes resorting to putting my business cards in DVD covers at the Blockbuster down the road… or leaving old Navy White Hats in the backseat of cars with their windows rolled down in the middle of the parking lot with my business card!!! The RINC didn’t care much for that…

So eventually I was ‘Tried… Trued… Tested… and Initiated into the Chief’s Mess… and all the troubles I put upon my leadership as a young buck came right back at me tenfold…

There I was at the office in OK, Muskogee… ring, ring… ring, ring…

“United States Navy Recruiting Muskogee… This is Dan Swing... May I help you???”

“Yeah, this is Roy down at the Creek Nation Truck Stop on 64 Highway... You gotta fella work’n for you by that name of Tate?”

“Yes… he works out of this office... why, how can I help you??”

“Listen… I appreciate what you all do out there… but he’s been harassing some of my truck drivers in the bathroom stalls here at the truck stop!”

“Come again…???”

He’s been been harassing this fellow truck driver following him into the bathroom stalls and making threatening comments while the guy is on the shitter… and this needs to stop!”

I mean… How the hell can you be prepared for something like that?”  Come to find out Petty Officer Tate was dating a young local gal and the ‘Truck Driver’ in question was her ol’ flame… Tate was following the feller into the truck stop and threatening to cut his balls off if he didn’t stop calling his girl!!!

Then I transferred to a brand new ship to be commissioned… USS MOMSEN… if you haven’t heard, this ship has been a living curse since conception! Five Chiefs Fired… CMC fired… a Department Head fired… and most recently the Commanding Officer was fired… all in the name of fraternization and conduct unbecoming… I guess some people can’t keep their ‘Dick’ outta the EDVR if you know what I mean!!!

So the day comes that the command is having a routine ‘Health and Comfort’ Inspection. I happen to be paired up with the ‘XO’ heading down to one of the male berthings as he finds a Dildo in one of the crewmember’s coffin racks and says…

 “This is a don’t ask don’t tell Navy… so I won’t ask.”

“Well Sir, I’ve been stabbed in the back by more than one of those since I’ve been in this Navy… so it comes as no surprise!”

The XO just stood there and glared at me… presumably his off colored joke was supposed to be funny and no one laughed… and apparently he didn’t like the idea of my one liner trumping his!!!

Then of course was my O’dark thirty wake up in the middle of deployment…

“Hey Chief you need to wake up… we’ve been locked out of the Tomahawk Equipment Room.”

“What d’ya mean… locked out?”

Somehow one of my young ‘Petty Officers’ zeroed the combo on the door nullifying the combination to the space and left to use the head… We had to call the MR to pry the door open only to find a blanket… a porn… and a bottle of Jergens Hand Lotion on the deck!!! I think the Captain put it this way…

“Chief Swing… I don’t find you to be very endearing to me in a situation like this!”

How could I argue with that? And the fellow in question already went to ‘Skippy’s’ Mast for Sodomy in Hong Kong… but that’s another story!!!

Then of course everyone knows about morning ‘Clampdown’…

In the Great State of Washington it rains… and rains… and rains…

And every morning ship’s company heads topside to sweep all the standing water off the deck… even though it continues to rain… and rain… and rain…

“Chief… why do we have to keep sweeping water in the rain… it’s asinine! We’re just going to be up here in an hour doing it again!”

 To that I would always reply…

“Shipmate… when are you going to get it thru that numb skull of yours! There is no way around it… complaining won’t help… the sooner you realize it the better!! You see… being a good shipmate is like being a good whore… the harder you work, the harder you get fucked… and the sooner you start enjoying it the better it is for everyone!!!”  

Yep… I left that ship with a bit of ‘OPTIC RECTALITIS’… It’s a condition where the neurons from your eyes and ass get crossed in your brain giving you a ‘SHITTY’ outlook on life!!!

 It took me three years on shore duty to recalibrate…

But there is the one… the one thing I never really understood…

The whole gauddamned concept of keeping your hands outta your pockets… Hell, the ‘Lone Sailor’ statue in Washington DC… a direct representation of the Navy Sailor past, present, and future has his hands in his pockets!! With all that salt… paint… diesel fuel & raw ‘American Courage’ he’s still show’n his rebellious zeal!!!

I’ll be damned if the new Navy Aquaflage Parka has a hand warmer built into it… but out there somewhere… somewhere in the bitter cold, stands a frustrated pissed off Chief Petty Officer, just a grinding his teeth in shear anger try’n to enforce Chapter 1, Section 3 of the good ol’ Uniform Regs to some young ‘Bootcamp’ as he looks at him in complete bewilderment!!!

Live and Learn I say… Live and Learn…