'The Golden Nooner'



I know in the past I’ve expounded on the very importance of how Sailors tell good Sea Stories! The genius of a good ‘No Shitter’ is only as good as the pallet of those who drink upon it!! For it’s how we pass our trade from the oldest salts to the youngest boots on deck!! A good ‘No Shitter’ should have the details added that only improve the story...Like a malted grain well aged Whiskey that’s been fermented in an oak cask for years… only to be relished by future generations!! So I pass along another ‘No Shitter’ for all of you to enjoy… don’t brow beat me too bad if it’s not to your satisfaction!!!

So there I was on the Chuck ‘V’… a nuclear powered bird farm sitt’n in one of the world’s largest dry docks in Bremerton, Washington! We were laid up in a three year complex overhaul gett’n the plumbing all refitted with newer modifications making her one of the sexiest platforms that ever sailed the seven seas!! I ain’t gonna bullshit ya… It was mostly boring!! There’s only so many fire watches to stand, Zone Inspections to tend to, and preservation that can be done in a long extended period… kind’a like shore duty with Sea Pay!! We were usually gett’n bored trying to find ways to keep from gett’n bored!! They say idle times are the Devil’s workshop… and we were some rust bust’n fools yes we were with plenty of idle time on our hands!!!

You see… during a long three year yard period there’s only so much inanimate steel and excessive oxidation that you could chip, scrape, needle gun, grind, and lay primer too & paint! As Crackerjacks who dominated the seven seas… we felt obliged to consume copious amounts of distilled beverages day in & day out!! Without hull numbers we’d never have found our way back to our God forsaken homes!! There’d be hung over Seamen waking up wondering where the hell they were and how the hell they ended up on a Spruance Can instead of the Kidd they belonged too!! God forbid you crawled into the wrong rack spoon’n another poor fella… you know it’s happened!!!

Then there’s the occasional obligatory hands & knees commode hugg’n, loaded to the hilt… which I might add is an occasional but not unprecedented occurrence… stumble out of the cab and blindly stagger to the brow… making that unstable salute to the Officer Of The Deck…

“Reqest daaaa’… permission to Cross the Patio Daddio!”

… and to the hatch down below finding their way to the head and maybe a snorkel or two in the shitter before finding their perspective rack!!!

The next morning I would still be suffering from one ginormous hangover and had slept in my damned clothes! I think some time in the night a gauddamned skunk… raccoon… possum… or other furry nocturnal critter copped a deuce in my mouth or I belched up a ten day old piece of balut… not quite sure, but if it was a critter, he must’ve been hang’n around the berthing quite a bit because it happened quite often!! I desperately needed to haul my half-drunken bag of bones to the rain locker and push a toothbrush across my gums and a razor across my face…

“Quarters, Quarters, All Hands To Quarters”

… NO TIME FOR ALL OF THAT!!

“Alka-Seltzer the wonder drug should do the trick…”

... And that’s how I’d quench that fire breathing dragon behind the eyeballs and the visions of the perky tittied train wreck from the night before… or so it seemed with them beer goggles on!!!

And here’s where we get to the heart of the story after a good Vitriolic, lava based ass chewing on the finer points of being an ‘Astute Petty Officer’ in this here United States Navy! That’s what you got for looking like something the cat dragged in five minutes late to Quarters!! Lunch time couldn’t come around any sooner… when the only thing on anyone’s mind from the night before was a long Nooner in a secluded area!! But don’t go to berthing… HELL NO!! That’s the first place Chief or the LPO would come look’n for your sorry ass!!!

Now up forward in the Port CIWS Mount below the catwalk, there was a tiny sovereign little Black Shoe province merely known as Mount 22! It was ruled by my running mate in crime Shawn ‘the six foot tall sexial parakeet’ Mitchell and populated by a dog-eared ragtag group known as ‘Those Damned CIWS Guys!!’ Its overlooked locality was insured by its isolation from the Brown Shoe Navy and a stinky AIMD Head at its front door!! One thing I learned having a head for your front yard patio… ‘Never eat weenies out of the urinal… no matter how high the betting gets!!’ Don’t ask, and I won’t tell!!!

As CIWS type FCs, no one with any real purpose ever bothered to make a social call or gave two shits what we were doing in those parts… it was like a boil on Rosie O’donnell’s ass!! Why worry… no one gave a shit what we were doing anyway! It was usually supplied with nekkit girlie magazines and a strange jar of Vaseline… not sure where that came from… but it was fairly comfortable and we even had a TV… some comfy sofas… & a standard size refrigerator for storing batteries!! Why you needed a gauddamned six foot tall Whirl Pool Frigidaire for batteries I’ll never know!! We figured we were pretty safe lest some jackass with insane behavior had done something really stupid… well, that’s pretty much what we were guilty of ninety-nine percent of the time!!!

Inside the Mount, back behind the CIWS barbette was a cubby hole made perfect for catch’n that Golden Nooner! It wasn't very big... you could cover the whole deck with a few foul weather jackets, some flash gear and a rubber ducky would make a fine pillow!! The deck was lifted allowing for some seclusion with the intermittent side shows coming through every now and again!! We’d just open the hatch to the sponson outside to allow enough air circulation giving cross-ventilation to clear any cigarette smoke!! If the Coast-to-Coast Brotherhood of Good-for-Nothing Lazy Bullshit Artistry had fashioned policies and provisions for the perfect space to screw the pooch, they couldn't have come up with a better place!!!

Sometime during the lunch hour I figured behind the mount was as good a place as any to crawl up and score forty winks dreaming about some downtown barmaid with luscious lips and perky tits while I chewed away at my drum beat’n hangover!

“Sleepy Head… Oh Sleep Head… Sleepy… Sleep… Sleeep… ZZZZzzzz!!!”

I had some pleasant dreams… yes I did! The next thing I know… I awoke to the sound of ‘Beverly Hills Cocks’ or was it ‘Assault on Brothel 69’… can’t quite remember the title!! I slid out from behind the mount and there was half a dozen ‘Sparrow & CIWS’ duty guys watch’n the latest of the cream of the crotch…

“While all you fuckers got your dick skinners in your fag bags circle jerk’n your pocket billiards I’ve been laid out behind the mount… what time is it?!?”

“It’s like 1800… Just got done with duty muster… your boys left without you!”

 Why didn’t anybody wake me up?!?”

“Sorry Bro… we didn’t know you were back there… besides… I ain’t my brother’s keeper!”

You see, we spent much of our productive time building an original Seagoing Canoe Club Video Library... A large collection of VHS Tapes containing such extraordinary plots like ‘As Horny As It Gets’… ‘Caddysnatch’… ‘Creamer vs Creamer’… and who could ever forget ‘Debbie Does Dallas’ and yes… ‘The Devil Inside Miss Jones!!’

Yep… they left the foxes watching the hen house yes they did! The Duty Section must’ve spent hours critiquing the finer points of removing bra straps & undies and how to properly display a pearl necklace & so forth while my boys were out swill’n the bars!! Sons-a-bitches were more slippery than a group of Vaselined squidly didlies!! My running mates left me hang’n hy-n-dry… all by my lonesome!! Hell, I missed ‘Turn Two’ and ‘Knock Off Ship’s Work’ all in one fell swoop… and felt about as useful as a trap door on a gauddamned canoe!!!

While my running mates were out gett’n drunker than a seven dollar hooker I was fiddle fart’n around… you see I figured the more I got drunk the more I would stay drunk before I again realized why I joined this here Canoe Club in the first place!! Just like Bluto & Popeye… I figured that was how my boys knocked me outta the competition for gals who liked men in seafarers!! It’s remarkable to me how half the kids in Bremerton don’t bare some resemblance to one of the pack of wolves I hung out with!!!

Yes… I don’t know how we kept outta Skippy’s Mast on so gauddamned many instances! When I made Chief ol’ Higgins, Lindgren, & Wintersteen all said…

“Gauddamn… they must be lett’n anybody where the anchors these days!”  

… Yeah, we were some of the slickest fish in the ocean skat’n through the proverbial holes we’d cut in the UCMJ net!! We got our fair share of ass chewings... but there’s nothing like waking up half nekkit after a night of carnal pleasure, three sheets to the wind recognizing you got twenty minutes to jump into your trousers and get a cab to the boat so you don’t miss ship’s movement… nothing worse than not remembering the exploits of those cute little darlings and their delightful feats of euphoric pleasure the night before either!!!

Somewhere along the line politicians and the like with so called ethical behavior contended we should stop wasting taxpayer’s money on an unnecessary group of scoundrels carrying on like drunken sailors… hell where’s all the fun in that?!? Ninety Percent of the best memories I have of the ol’ Canoe Club was all that grab ass and horse play that went on!! Who can forget all that beer swilling, hoisting shots of the cheapest whiskey in the house… puffing on cigars that look like they fell out a buffalo’s ass while patt’n barmaids on the rear and telling anyone who’d listen…  how they pulled liberty in Thailand chasing sordid women through the Soi to convert to Christianity or some bullshit baloney!! By the time I met up with those bastards they were drunker than a Southern Baptist Preacher at a High School Dance with the car keys in the barmaid’s hip pocket… and what might fine hips they were!!!

… And that my friends… is a ‘No Shitter!’