Saturday, March 28, 2015

‘Missing Ship’s Movement’


Remember pulling the lines in and taking her out, when you got the last line across…

 

“Underway… Shift Colors!”

 

Here I go again plunging butt nekkid into the ol’ fountain of youth... just’a shuffl’n through them old memories that were steam pressed and government-issued when we journeyed the high seas! I also remember, if you were fifteen minutes early you were on time… and usually forty-five minutes ahead of anything of any consequence!! Made me ponder through some ol’ cobwebs about a fella I once knew on the ol’ Baglady!!!

 

Missing ship’s movement was a serious crime in the Ol’ Canoe Club! One they would hog-tie and haul you up into the rafters just to soak you in gasoline and light you off using your doo-dah as a wick!! Yours truly always made it back in time for the early morning drunk parade known as line handlers ‘cause I valued my doo-dah too much… but there was one Sea & Anchor Detail we were missing a team member!!!

 

Yep…I can still remember it like yesterday! Pat Rachal rollicking all happy-go-lucky up the pier when suddenly he sees the brow lifted at the end of the pier!! He says he was down by the quay wall say’n his last family goodbyes before gett’n underway! For all I knew he woke up at some house of horizontal refreshment drunk as a waltz’n piss ant in the dirt… oh wait a minute, that probably would’a been me or one of my other runningmates!!! 

 

I asked Pat exactly what happened on that fateful morn… and this is what he had to say…  

 

“Nothing in my life could prepare me for that feeling I got that day! You know… that lost sinking feeling in your gut like it’s gonna fall through your asshole!?!”



“Yeah Pat, I bet you were having about as much fun as pissing on spark plugs at that moment!”  

 

“Yeah, I guess you could say I had that ol’ pucker factor going on you’d been talking about!”

 

 “Ha-Ha… I remember that look on your face as you’d realized the ship was pull’n away from the pier… you looked about as confused as a fart in a perfume factory!”

 

“Well as it was, the ship had been on a pretty strange schedule! We had a new Skipper who was increasing the OP Tempo and we seemed to be up and down the West Coast like a damn Yo-Yo!! If it weren’t Gun Fire Support off San Clemente, it was Port Visits as south as Mexico and as North as Vancouver!!!”

 

“Hell, I didn’t mind being haze grey and underway! At that point in our careers if we weren’t on watch or doing heads-n-beds then we were watch’n movies, play’n bones, or read’n nekkid gurly magazines with the pullout pin-ups!! That’s how I remember it!!!”

 

“Ha-Ha… yes, I suppose you would! Anyway, we’d pulled in under the bridge that Friday and I was about as excited as a ten-year-old all sugared up on a sleepover! 


It was a duty day and I was due a favor from the ol’ Section Leader, I got the Pier Watch so I could hang out and mingle with my wife!! The only problem beings I also had the same watch on the 04-08 rotation and ya know you gotta love the pier SOPA… their watch relief was always late!!!”

 

 

“OH Man… that had to suck!”

 

 

“Yeah, and to top it off… they announced the night before that we’d be getting underway early on Monday morning as was usually the case! Man, we couldn’t be more unlucky if we’d fallen in a barrel of cigars and came out with a handful of turds!! It’s like if you made plans in advance, you could pretty much expect those plans to be questioned… changed… and ultimately canceled for the needs of the Navy!!!”

 

“Well, you know what they say, ‘When your day is going well… chances are you ain’t pay’n attention!”

 

“In good fashion come Monday, my family and I left early that morning to beat the mile-long military convoy to get on base and make it to the pier promptly so I could give my heartfelt goodbyes and all! Strolling down the pier feeling a little sad… I looked up briefly only to see the tug alongside with the hawser running to the ship with the crane holding the brow up into the air!! That’s when I got that pucker factor feeling mentioned above!!!”

 

“Ha-Ha-Ha… Oh Boy, we didn’t think you had a corn dog’s chance in a hog trough to make it onboard! We couldn’t help but deride you and give you a bunch’a shit!!”  

 

“Yeah, you were an incorrigible bunch of bastards… about as subtle as a gynecologist wearing a gas mask!”

 

 “AAAH… the splendid fun of confronting danger!”

 

“Anyway, once I saw the ship was pulling away I bolted like a rat up a drainpipe trying to make it to the crane! After a dash at the crane and a few explicative remarks, the crane operator was not so inclined to lower the brow!! With adrenaline rushing, I stopped and looked at the ship… I must have had that ‘whore in church caught with the old man’s wife’ look on my face!!!” 

 

“Yeah, I was gonna say you looked like an unwanted prick in a room full of hookers but I like your analogy as well!” 

 

Well, I figured the ship about eight feet away and a good flying leap I might be able to make the jump! I picked up my man parts and started off as my shipmates were all hoot’n and holler’n while pointing to my salvation as there was one of them Yokohama Fender like camels between the ship and the pier!! I took that flying leap and bounced off the Yokohama like a trampoline just managing to grab a chock with one hand and a lifeline with the other!!!”  

 

“Yeah, I remember I was part of the topside gang that pulled you up before your sorry ass went into the briny deep!”

 

 "I’d like to say I grabbed that line and scaled the side of the ship like an Adam West-like ‘Batman’ or ‘Spiderman’ but if it weren’t for my shipmates pulling me up from the chocks I might not of made it! I was hanging there like a piƱata completely depending on you guys!! You never let me down!!!”

 

“Hey, that’s what shipmates are for… right?!?” 

 

“After the corpsman checked me over and the Chief in charge of line handlers gave me that…’you dumb son-of-a-bitch’ look I was just glad to be aboard! The Skipper and XO were both looking down at all the congratulatory ass grabbing and ‘Good Gaming’ going on with a few high fives and such noticing my ball cap floating away into the San Diego Harbor!! I thought I might of escaped Skippy’s Mast but it didn’t work out as planned!!!”

 

“You know that ol’ saying… ‘It was time to bargain like a gypsy and pay like a gentleman!” 

 

“I had been to Skippy’s Mast twice during my enlistment, but this one was my favorite if you can say that! I remember asking FC1 Hodges…

 

 

“If you have any influence with the executive operations of a report chit… can you get them to take it easy on me?” 

 

“… The last thing I wanted to do was buttheads with the Skipper or tap dance with the chain of command like a bunch’a disagreeable skunks!” 

 

“I bet the Skipper was madder than a mosquito in a maniquin factory!” 

 

“Oh he was… he didn’t consider my rather unorthodox arrival onto his ship to be in good faith! And the ol’ man never minced words as he had a knack for asking questions that just pulled away from the bullshit and made you think!”

 

“I’ll bet while you stood there in front of the Skipper you felt like that ‘whore’ everyone gossips about at the family reunion!”  

 

Something like that… Nevertheless my wife had to visit me onboard for a couple of weeks! Funny, those were good memories too!!  

 

“Well you ol’ Codger… if it was even legal, I’m sure one or two of your shipmates would’a gladly stood your restriction for you on a night or two…!” 

 

“With that being said… I don’t know if I ever thanked my mates properly! If any of you ol’ salty bastards are reading this… Thank You!! It was the Worst of Times and the Best of Times… because of people like you!!!”  

 

Aaah Hell Pat… Stop being so Sappy… you’re gonna get somebody all teary eyed! That’s what shipmates do!!!” 

 

“Last thing… I recorded this story and stashed it in a sea chest! You know, that cardboard box in the garage with the medals, ribbons, swords, rugs, Ball Caps, cruise jackets, Shellback and Golden Dragon papers, CIWS & Harpoon patches and Zippo lighters… Just to let you know!!!”  

 

Yep… Every Sailor who knows the ol’ rascal Rachal love the Son-of-a-Gun! Nothing like Shipmates… Nothing like Shipmates!!!

 

 

 

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

'Marilyn... That's Miss Monroe to You!'



It’s been said that Marilyn Monroe had an IQ of 168! That’s hell in high numbers!! I guess that explains why she had so many damn boytoys… they were too intellectually boring to keep up!!!
 
 


Sunday, March 22, 2015

The LibHound...

 
 
(Just Click On The Image)
 
Hey… Hey… Look What I Found! It’s the LibHound!!!

Saturday, March 21, 2015

‘A Junior Officer’s Little Red Panty Puffer’


Now here’s a little story I’ve got to tell that I’d heard about and was only partially privy too! In other words I wasn’t there to see it but got the 411 on the down low and heard about it later…!! The names of some shipmates in this here no-shitter may be changed or modified since most would undoubtedly object to their exposer as idiots or derelicts, as so many of us were...!!!  

 

Now those of you who served… rather it be Navy or any other branch of service had come to realize at an early age that there were Junior Officers whose ass you wouldn’t piss in if their guts was on fire! Yeah, you know who I’m talking about… we’ve all had them! Some patronizing twenty-three year old little ass wart with a commission and less sea time than you’ve got salt wrung outta your socks telling you how to do your gauddamned job!! The kinda fella who whenever he left his coffee cup unattended… usually got the ol’ business end of an erector set or a freshly plucked pube for added flavor… if you know what I mean!!!

 

We had a Junior Officer once who couldn’t lead a cavalry charge into a whorehouse! But boy he sure new ‘Shit about Shinola’… always had big words and small ideas!! This was the kinda fella who had a rough enough time trying to manage his own responsibilities… yet had no qualms instructing you on how to handle yours!! Yes Sir… he was about as low down as whale shit!!!

 

Now as you can figure by now this certain particular Mr.Jr’O' was not held in the highest esteem in regards to his enlisted compadres! He had a slight tendency to discount anyone not wearing khaki who would try to enlighten him on the finer things in Navy life!! He was the kinda fella who I’m sure was plenty book smart but when it came to common sense… well let’s just say his clue meter was pegging at zero!! My Chief used to say…

 

“Junior Officers are sometimes like Ohms Law… the Quantity of rank can be inversely proportional to the Quality of Reason!”

 

Well Mr.Jr’O’ had a really nice red sports car… one of them fancy European types that he was so very proud of, being a young single officer and all! It was on a weekend and he arrived on the pier with his little red car and his cute little girlfriend on an early Saturday morning to give her the grand tour and invite her for breakfast in the weirdroom prior to a stroll on the beach!! Now beings that he had a certain patrician charm that you could associate with jock itch… it was easy to see why he felt privileged enough to park his little red panty puffer right next to the brow!!!

 

Being in the Ol’ Canoe Club there’s an unusual particularity called the tide you have to be somewhat concerned about when dealing with the lower end of the ships brow! The bottom on the pier side of the brow has a fat steam roller shaped wheel allowing it to move freely back and forth as the ship rises and falls with the tide!! So the morning watch had just been relieved for chow and noticed the nice shiny red panty puffer sitting deliberately right at the end of the brow!!!

 

The Officer of the Deck(OOD) asked the Petty Officer of the Watch(POOW) if he knew whether the tide was in or not! He looked at the tide chart in his shack and said the tide was going out!! The OOD realized as the ship got lower, the brow would roll and do a number on Mr.Jr’O's car!!!

 

Being a smart and caring Shipmate the OOD had the POOW phone the Weirdroom and inform the mess crank serving breakfast that Mr.J’O's car needed to be moved! But Mr.J’O’ being his mean and shiftless self-relayed the message that he does not take 'advice' from the POOW and he would be up when he finished his meal to depart with his lady… so guess what happened next!! Yep… you probably figured, he delayed himself for some time fiddle fart’n around showing off his prowess to his sweet tart before he finally arrived just in time to witness the handrail of the brow breaking his passenger side window and impaling the door to his car!!!

 

Gauddamned he was ‘PISSED!’ He had this look on his face… with those big eyes and high pitched gibberish he muttered that was just begging for parody!! He tried to have the whole gauddamned Quarterdeck bunch written up… they were taking enough heat to jump start the sun!! Then came the Section Leader…

 

“Who’s the pivot man in this huge Cluster Fuck?”

 

Then came the Command Duty Officer (CDO)…

 

“Now Senior Chief let’s not go out with our pistols half-cocked… let’s find out what happened first!”

 

Then Mr.Jr’O’ piped in…

 

“I want all these watchstanders on report… they just sat there and watched as my car got damaged by the brow and did nothing!!”

 

That’s when the CDO decided to share his views on Jr. Dipshit’s IQ…

 

“Before your alligator mouth overloads your hummingbird ass, do you really want the Skipper to know how your personal vehicle had been wrecked by the brow in a part of the pier your car wasn’t authorized to be?”

 

Mr.Jr’O’ went steaming off pissed as hell with not another word as the Section Leader says to the CDO…

 

“What is it with that fella? Is it because light travels faster than sound, he appears so bright until his lips start squak’n?”

 

…’while shaking his head’ the CDO retorts…

 

“God Love ‘Em… Somebody’s gotta!”

 

… Ha-Ha-Ha … Now ain’t that just Rich!!!
 


Sunday, March 15, 2015

‘Pistolas, Trainwrecks & Finding Your Happy Place’


I must be suffering from retarded maturity because things keep coming up in my analog cobwebbed memory banks that make me wanna say Hmmm…! I bring you another non-regulated legendary sea going diatribe full of horse pucky and a whole lotta you ain’t gonna believe this shit kinda stuff!! Ownership of your secret decoder ring for all the gauddamned ‘PC’ crap will be left at the door cause that nonsense ain’t allowed passed the Quarterdeck on these here pages!! So buckle up your kapoks and get ready to heave-hoe ‘cause these are some real no shitters!!!

I really don’t know what happened to the Canoe Club of old when men were men made of iron and women were women who ran away scared! Now they’re cavorting together in fan rooms, under canvass cover of the RHIB, or various other dank voids around the ship!! Instead of buck’n it up and taking it, most of them seem to gobble Prozac, Lithium, Xanax and Zoloft like starving anteaters in a termite nest, but they never abuse drugs… not in this here improved Armada!!!

Now our new hero in the latest of sea tales was the greatest repeat offender of bad luck throughout the West Coast as the unrepentant Lord of all screw-ups! I’ll leave his name out of this as he was a big corn fed fella who could probably break me like a twig and had that don’t-fuck-with-me look about him that made you want to be his friend… or somewhere else, but you didn’t wanna be in his way… that includes me!! He was one of them types that didn’t have much to say and managed to make it all the way up the ranks to FC1 before he lost his paddle in the middle of shit creek and commenced to go over the falls!!!

You know how it goes gett’n ready for watch and putt’n on your best summer duds with razor blade creased trousers, spit shined shoes and a crack’n snap salute that Bull Halsey would be proud of! It was about that time of day I remember as the Duty Gunnersmate was handing out them semi auto 9MM Italian made P-shooters and dispensing the goofy Kevlar vests…  usually six sizes too big and equivalent to a four inch thick lead kimono!! Included with that was a cranial cavity protector for the young booter type knot heads as they damn near exploded with excitement and anticipation before they got berated by the Gunnersmate to check the Pellet Pushers in the clearing barrel before handing them off and relieving the watch!!  Don't try this at home… some things are best left to idiots!!!

This was about the time when FC1 was given his US Navy issued Pop gun where he holstered it and headed out as the Roving Security Watch topside! But apparently he enjoyed showing off to the youngsters on how to make a proper sight picture and squeeze rather than jerk the trigger while roving them decks!! I don’t know if he was play’n  ‘Quick Draw McGraw or emulating Barnie Fife while practicing for the great shootout at the OK Corral… but he caused quite a stir near his favorite lifeline and somehow with a Scurry & ‘SKALOOSH’… dropped his side into the drink!! Apparently his dexterity wasn’t quite thimble enough to chomp a bugar and adjust his pistola at the same time… and after such an incident he probably felt like he needed one them there half gallon tubes of Preparation-H!!!

Now for reasons beyond me that I’ll never understand… he never received more than a verbal reprimand for such a calm and cool deed! Hell I recommended he get requalified standing his watch… but no go… it didn’t happen!! Maybe it had something to do with having enough qualified gun toters on the Security Force Watchbill… not quite sure, but it was what it was and that was that!!!

Now let’s mosey along to a couple months down the road shall we?!?

Before I go on you must understand, ol’ FC1 had the basic watchstanding manners of a Junkyard Guard Dog… you know the Leroy Brown type… in the song, but without the ‘Ol School Mentality!’ No instead of risking him toss’n another piece of hardware down to Davey Jones he’d been stuck in the Ready Service Magazine to suit up the watch as a Duty Gunnersmate!! Hell we figured… “How bad can he screw that up?!?”

But there comes the twist… as a flint lipped, beady eyed ol’ biddy of a battle ax First Class Electrician had figured into the picture! The passageway in front of the Ready Service Magazine was secured during watch turnovers but EN1 decided it was a good time to take a short cut in said area figur’n this was stupid stuff that topsiders did and they’d never shoot at girls!! FC1 had warned her the first time not to cut through the secured zone as the watertight doors adjacent to both sides of the Magazine were closed yet she paid no mine to such details!!!

So the second time came around and…

“I told you not to come through this way M-O-T-H-E-R-F-U-C-K-E-R… GET Down On the DECK… NOW!!!"

…Here everything went to hell as our duty electrician must’a been wracked with sobs and a cascade of uncontrolled tears as she hit the deck... can you say deployable disposable undies?!? Security Alert was called away and after a heartfelt ‘ASS’ chewing by the CDO ol’ FC1 looked like he’d just got caught french kiss’n a jackass’s south end!!

“I'm not going ANYWHERE near the aft gun locker when FC1 is on watch without a life insurance policy and a standing funeral home pre-paid reservation!”

… Now it must be obvious to a mentally retarded monkey that nothing can stop this fella from putt’n himself in bad predicaments! I’m not one to deny that at all… but when I was a young Crackerjack… this is exactly what would have been expected of the Sentry who stands his post and challenges all who enters the area… am I right?!? Back in the days before panties got bunched up and knickers would get pulled up through peoples asses if you did something stupid enough to have a side arm pulled on you… the next question the ‘Skipper’ would ask…

“Why the Hell didn’t you shoot the sumbitch!”

… Well my how times have changed! Nowadays everything evokes the PC’ whiners!! We must never, ever say or do anything that might upset them, as virtually everything does!!!

Next thing you know ol’ FC1 is front and center at ‘DRB!’  Talk about foxes watch’n the hen house!! I think we sent FC1 in and out the door a half dozen times while discuss’n the situation and our diverse disagreements in this trainwreck of thoughts…

“He had no right to pull a firearm on EN1… This egocentric masculine flowering has to be stopped!”

“This is such bullshit! He dropped a gun over the side a few months back and no one noticed… he stands his watch by the book and everyone loses their fucking minds!”

“That’s the kind of attitude that must be expurgated in favor of a more civilized tone!”

“You’ve got to be shitting me!”

… as I just shook my head!!!

Yep… he got tarred and feathered and ridden outta town on a rail! But since he technically followed his general orders he wasn’t sent to mast but forever stripped of his Gun Quals and dignity onboard!! Now that’s enough to make any man loose his frick’n mind!!!

A few months later we ended up in the yards in Seattle! Now I remember a time wanting to push a certain Ensign’s nasal cartilage through his colon… being he was such and Asshole and all!! But I always knew never to act upon it… or even say it aloud!! After a steady dose of criticism, moaning, complaining and the previous history… I think ol’ FC1 had about enough of this petulant little snot nose of a man!!!

Poor ol’ FC1 must’a got ate up with the dumb ass cause he finally went off the deep end threatening to break the young FCO in half if he didn’t back off! The Ensign panics… he’s noth’n but a buck-0-five soak & wet and doesn’t know how to handle this big ass son-of-a-bitch…

“Chief Swing do you think you could go in there and calm FC1 down, he’s really agitated and I do believe he’s ready to kill someone!”

“Well… Sir… what did you do to agitate him? I don’t wanna get involved… it’s your bullshit that got you into this mess!”

“But… But…”

“Alright… I’ll talk to him!”

At some point, you get sick & tired of the lightweight backstabbers and do-gooders… THAT, I understood about FC1! I explained to him about the ways of Briar Rabbit and how he had to find his happy place… and how FC1 needed to find his happy place when everyone was just piss’n in his Wheaties!! Hell I understood the big bloke… he was pretty gauddamned simple to figure out!! The Navy was changing and he was caught in the crossfire… just wasn’t smart enough to figure how to tap dance with the details!!!

He ended up in the Hospital and never came back again as far as I remember…

But maybe I’m just a barnacle encrusted son-of-a-bitch! Hell I ain’t gonna give you the walking barefoot twelve miles daily through eighteen inches of shark-infested snow kinda bullshit… But it seems the military is giving special attention to challenging the social norms even entertaining the idea of tranny’s and cross dressers these days!! The whole epicene circus smells weak to me!! But what the hell do I know?!?  

Yeah I get it…

“Dan The Navy Man, you talk like you were raised by wolves carrying contagious ignorance, stupidity and contractible poor behavior!”

… Well, all I got to say… If you think the personalities of pit bulls and cocker spaniels are equally warm and fuzzy, you probably outta stay away from dogs!!!

 


Saturday, March 14, 2015

'HAVING A LITTLE FUN'



After pulling into port in San Francisco we went into town and visited a few shops. When we came out, there was a cop writing out a parking ticket… 

We went up to him and I asked…

“Come on man, how about giving a few sailors a break?" 

He ignored us and continued writing the ticket. I called him an idiot!

He glared at me and started writing another ticket for having worn-out tires. So my buddy Robert called him a fathead! He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he started writing more tickets. This went on for about 20 minutes.

The more we abused him, the more tickets he wrote. He finally finished, sneered at us and walked away. 

Just then our bus arrived, and we got on it and went home. We always look for cars with Obama 2012 bumper stickers.

We try to have a little fun each time we pull into port.

It is so important for us service members!!!


Friday, March 13, 2015

A Father To His Son





A father is saying goodbye to his son as he goes off around the world for his six month Navy cruise…

"Now son I want you to be careful out there and look out for them gays!"

"Gays?”

"Oh yes son, they’re plenty on the ship, so watch your ass!"

"But… but… how will I know if their gay?”

"Trust me son… you'll know!"

So six months pass and father & son meet again and go for a manly drink and start chatt’n away…

"Dad… you know when you warned me about the gays? Well one night I was sweeping the deck and all of a sudden a shipmate put his hand on my shoulder, so I threw him overboard!"

"But how did you know he was gay?"

"Because he swam behind the ship for two whole days shouting … throw me a boy! Throw me a boy!!!"



Friday, March 6, 2015

‘Just Outside the Port Hole’






A sailor, fresh out of boot camp, was on his first tour at sea!

The first night out he dropped his soap in the shower! His Chief was in the shower too and told him to pick up the soap. The squid said…

"Oh no you don't, Chief. My Dad was in the Navy and he warned me about picking up soap in the shower!"

The Chief said…

"Sailor, I told you to pick up the soap!"

The squid still refused. So the Chief said…

"If you don't pick up the soap, I'm going to put you on wheel polishing detail for a week!"

The squid asked…

"Polishing what wheels?"

The Chief said…

"The wheels on this ship!"

The squid said…

"I didn't see any wheels on this ship."

The Chief said…

"Well they're just right outside that porthole!"

The squid stuck his head out the port hole, looked around and said…

"I still don't see any wheEEEEELS!!!"

You can figure out what happened next…