"Our Lack of Social Graces ... So Help Me God"

If you never enlisted into the United States Navy Canoe Club as a Crackerjack Sailor, you missed the best times for pranks, fool errands & tomfoolery! Members of the Blue Jacket Navy in those days were not given the training of the social graces that today's Crackerjacks are supposed to be given. Then again in today’s Canoe Cabaret and the fashion show that comes along, it’s hard to distinguish US Navy Crackerjacks from the crew of a Mickey Mouse Cruise ship!

I remember my Chief’s expression …

"You bunch’a shits! Look at yourselves … a total disgrace! Grown men the Navy has deemed worthy of entrusting the world's most sophisticated equipment with … yet when there’s work to be done, you bastards act like an old milk cow one tit short of an udder!”

Them Chiefs always had the best ways of expressing themselves …

An old Shipmate off the Nimitz, by the name of Jimmy Dee had some memories to share with a fella’ no-shit teller and this is what he had to say!

In my time in this here Navy we had some crazy fun when the dull-drums would set in. Some of the recollections I have really made my time memorable… Oh the things we would do after closing that big ass hatch from the hanger bay to the sponson. 

Once after a particularly long day at sea, I was sitting at my desk in the RAM office, feet up, hat pulled down over my eyes, sleeping like a baby. Then, something kept tapping my foot. In my stupor I thought it was one of the guys messing with me as they always did. I remember being half awake and yelling …

"Mother fucker stop it!"

I looked up and there stood my Department Head, a full bird Captain. I jumped to attention but further complicating the issue was the dingle berries the guys had taped to the bill of my cover while I was asleep. I looked like an escapee from a Mexican mariachi band! The Captain looked at me and asked if I had a long day to which I replied…  “Yes sir!” He shook his head, and left the office.

That’s just one fine memory I recall …

We use to do some crazy stuff in those storerooms as well. I recollect one boring day we got into a rubber band fight, which ended up with paperclips flying at 100mph at each other’s face, which unfortunately ended up with me shrink wrapped to a rolling chair … in my underwear … left to fend for myself on the hanger deck! So there I was, rolling back and forth with the motion of the ocean Not one single son-of-a-bitch would stop to help. They’d stop to look and laugh, but no help! It took a while but I managed to rip the wrap and get lose. Didn't see the guys till muster the next morning. They were hiding out in S-1 because they knew if I found them it would be hell to pay!!!

There was a time when we called our ship our home! I guess in our memories the ship always will be, with the finest sons-a-bitches we’d ever know!!!