'Lombard'

Memory is a wonderful cost-free time machine! It allows us timeworn grey haired bastards to revisit our old romps all over yesteryear in Sea Stories with young’ns who have far younger legs!!!

How many scallywags can ever say they ran down the crooked path of Lombard Street, San Francisco in the dead of night butt naked fueled on loads of liquor & beer and a pack of Marlboros, pushed over a row of motorbikes outside a biker bar while your buddies pulled your scrawny drunk ass to safety! Yep, been there done that… and that's a no shitter!!!

It was some years back on the USS Baglady and we’d pulled into Treasure Island for a week of some much needed training at the Naval Fire-Fighting School there in the center of the Bay! Looking over the city skyline at dusk was quite a site to see just when liberty would go down!! So with a splash of Old Spice and a shave between the ears, we were off for some fun with the night life in the Bay City!!!

Now you can imagine a horde of simple minded Crackerjacks on their way through the local taverns and bars of anywhere town-square being the barnacle-loving, bilge drinking swabbies we were all meant to be! And knowing that all Squids back then were nothing but perverts which applied to every swing’n dick in the US Navy save a few do-gooders and such when even those who weren't chasing skirt had no objection to the others who did!!!

“Nine out of Ten Sailors like nice big tits! The 10th one prefers the nine others!”

I’d have to say, I was a pretty decent looking fella in my younger years… no major dental or hygiene problems, and sporting a six pack with a woody 99% of the time! Nowadays the six pack somehow turned into a keg!! I suppose that’s where gett’n old comes into play… but I regress!!!

So there we were off on one of them no holds barred rollicking Crackerjack free-for-alls looking for pretty girls and cheap beer… or cheap girls and free beer… whatever works! Because they say beer has its virtue… Always has, always will!! Fact is, this world doesn't amount to much unless you give it a little amplification… You have to encourage it!! There is nothing like a cold beer and a butt nekkit night between the sheets with some pretty little thing with a soft behind! Unfortunately for us on that particular night… no one was as lucky!!!

We somehow ended up at some place called the Palladium and it went something like this…

“Your eyes are like spanners, when I look into them my nuts tighten!”

… or …

“You must have a mirror in your panties because I can see myself in them!”

… then came the retort…

“UUUH, no thank you, I’ve already got an asshole down there!”

“The hell with this place… This party is as much fun as a fire in a gauddamned orphanage, let’s get out of here!”

“What’s wrong Boats you get turned down, or turned faced down with your ass in the air? This is San Fran after all!”

“HaHaHaHa!!!”

“Fuck you and the horse you road in on! These bitches ain’t nothing but skanks anyway and none of them want to talk to no squid no how!”

“Boats don’t you know? A conversation with you is like changing an adult diaper.  It just keeps unfolding to reveal more and more shit!”

“HaHaHaHa!!!”

“I’m leaving and hitting a liquor store I saw down the road! Is anybody with me?”

So we rounded up the boys, about a dozen of us give or take a few, and off we were to a liquor store to brown bag it while strolling the ‘Streets  of San Francisco!’  Somewhere along the line we came across a corner bar with a lot of bikers inside hoot’n & holler’n!! At least I think they were bikers with all the motorbikes lined up out front and all!!!

Now I couldn’t make this shit up… As we were ambling on by, we started hoot’n & holler’n back at the bar raising a toast with our brown bags when I just happened to lean a little too close to the first bike in the row!! Wouldn’t you know it, I managed to tip it over and just like dominoes, a whole ten to fifteen bikes all tumbled to the ground… just like the movies!!!

There ain’t nothing like pissing off a bar full of bikers so they can chase you down and pound you into a bloody pulp! We took off like scalded dogs up the road without another word and never looked back!! We had to be certifiably ‘NUTZ’ to pull off a stunt like that… but we did and got away with it!!!

The next thing we knew after a cool down and a few swigs… we’d come across this curvaceously windy road! It wasn’t just curvy… it was the curviest road in the gauddamned world with a Twenty-Seven percent grade and eight tight hairpin curves!! We’d just met up with the top of Lombard Street!!!

Ol’ Boats steps out in front and says…

“I’ll bet none of you spineless jellyfish have the nut sacks to run down this here crooked hill butt ass naked all the way to the bottom!”

Then he just glared at us like a cluster fuck of turds floating in a pitcher of beer!  Because you know when you’re drunk your brain becomes a seething cauldron of bright ideas!! One of the guys countered…

“That’s a long run with a lot of turns!”

… his response …

"Well, a horse that shits fast don't shit long."

I couldn’t help thinking he was just pulling my dick… yanking my chain!!!

“Okay, last chance for you chickens to bail out… and that means you!”

… And before you knew it everyone stripped down and folded their clothes up into their armpits! We were totally out of our minds and I’m sure all that whiskey & beer swash’n around in our bellies had something to do with such a ridiculous decision!! We were of course trying to shock, which is normal amongst a gang of dumb Crakerjacks!!!

We were all running downhill butt naked while cracking up hysterically with retarded drunken jocularity! It was like the Twenty-One Gun Salute full of a bunch of Acrobatic Exhibitionists!! Looking back it seems nuttier than a port-a-potty at a peanut festival!!!

In the midst of it all I’d tripped over some pedigreed rose bushes and found out the hard way every rose does have its thorn! I remember drinking at a bar with the guy’s one minute and waking up in my rack butt naked with scratches all up and down my ass the next!! It wasn’t long before we were forced to explain our aberrant behavior like being overcome by an inebriated, uncontrollable urge to streak naked and leapfrog parking meters while harassing the locals and any other mayhem we could get ourselves into… Oh to be young again!!!

Nowadays that would be considered deviant and perverted and a six year old could get charged with willful sexual assault over such debauchery!!!

All those wonderful memories! Collect them and remember them… as they will make up the amalgamation of your geriatric reminiscences one day!! When I’m old, tired and senile while taking a deuce in my Depends… I want these recollections to be what’s left of my old rust bucket of a brain when I can’t remember anything else but how to jerk my own chain!!!