‘What Have We Done With The Drunken Sailor’

I’ll never understand today’s Canoe Club and the whole Alcohol Deglamorization thing. Booze combined with our naturally inherent stupidity made Crackerjack Sailors famous the world over. We were widely known for our improper behavior, destroying waterfronts, chasing dames, disrupting social events, and urinating in those fabulous water fountains!

“I didn’t know it was a water fountain… I thought it was a public urinal with the bronze cupid peeing in the middle of the pool… how was I to know?!?”

Sailors have been getting drunk since the dawn of time. Even in the Book of Genesis, Noah planted a vineyard after sailing the Ark and got dead drunk. And in Norse Mythology, the God of the Sea is also the God of Beer who always gets the other Gods drunk when visiting his domain!! We’re the only branch of service that even mentions beer in our fight song for Christ Sakes!

 Did you know that Captain Morgan was a colossal alcoholic?!? It’s said he died from dropsy due to his acute alcoholism! And for all you literature buffs out there, in the Aubrey-Maturin series of ‘Wooden Ships and Iron Men,’ they refer to the Captain’s Coxswain as being ‘Drunk even by Naval standards?!?’        

They’ve named bars after us in places all around the world. Pattaya Beach you’ll find the Sailor Bar, Cabo San Lucas there’s Squid Row, The Drunken Sailor in Key West, Florida as well as many, many more. Hell… I’ve even heard of ‘The Drunken Sailor Bar’ in Greece & Spain!!’ We’ve made our mark everywhere we go!

I remember a shipmate on my first trip to Mexico say’n…

“It’s time to get Pirate eyed and Tequilafied Shipmate!”

Why does ya’ think Popeye always squints his one eye?!? It’s ‘cause he’s always drink’n doubles and seeing the same way!!!

I found over the years that hanging out in dives and hole-in-the-wall shit joints are some of the best places to meet the most interesting specimens of humanity! It’s the kind of place you go to when there’s too much blood in your alcohol!! You go because you sought solace in God, philosophy, or the bottle depending on your personal taste!!!

 In my heyday when I was a young fuck up, we had our hangouts! There were five-dollar pitchers at the El Camino’s or Eighty-Eight Beers around the world at McDinni’s Baha!! And we used ‘booze coupons’ to pay for it all!!!

"Hey go get us something to drink. I'm thirstier then a Hooker on a dry dick!"

When you’re a Crackerjack Sailor in faraway lands, you’re always thirsty, but it’s nothing a couple of 151 Mai Thais can’t take care of! We drank and we drank… sometimes every night of the week… import of course!! We’d pat ourselves on the back if we didn’t go out for a smoke and a drink!! I remember hearing a shipmate once…

"I'm gonna get a dog, name it Liver, and abuse it!"

Yes… we were a bunch of pool shooting, beer-swilling, card-sharking sons-a-bitches! All we cared about was chasing tail and drinking!! That’s just how it was…

“If I ever quits me drink’n and screwing strange women, it will be a sign of the Apocalypse I tell you!”

And more times than not we ended up drunk and alone…

“I'm as faced as a shit could possibly be faced. I mean I’m fuck as drunk...fuck it, I’m just gonna lay here and play with One Eyed Willie… In the street!”

And Drunken Sailors tend to become some of the bravest of souls when fueled on cigarettes and booze! At times It can be like an aging bull terrier trying to take on a Rottweiler…

"Don’t screw with me you son-of-a-bitch or I’ll fuck your old lady up the ass and bitch slap your kids at your funeral!"

… or …

“After I shove that pool stick so far up your ass it tickles your tonsils I’m gonna fuck start your girl in the ass until she begs me to stop!”

Yes, vulgar exchanges, darts, pool, fights, banter, the DJ playing in the background… and Ever so often you won the prize and got to take the girl home! But then there were some nights you’d be so drunk you’d find the gal who’d stroked more wood than a furniture polisher. Not to mention waking up next to a face looking like a gorilla's armpit. You remember the one… the morning you tried to chew your arm off to get away before she woke up!?!

But then there were those nights we didn’t get lucky. Remember making your approach to the ship about midnight wobbling up the gangplank?!? It was an automatic drunk detector… as a glideslope indicator would have worked wonders navigating up the brow. Hopefully, you made it back to the right bunk!! There was nothing like rolling into berthing tore up from the floor up!

Many a night we’d stroll on into the berthing or the crew’s lounge and there’d be a shipmate slumped over like a sack of potatoes, except potatoes usually had better skin!!  It was always a good time for puking and pissing anywhere and everywhere waking up the duty crew!! There’s nothing like a Freddy Krueger look’n Boatswain-mate son-of-a-bitch ripping open the rack curtains and letting out the ol’ ‘Golden Flow… or Seaman Schmuckatelli leaving a rainbow-colored liquid trail all the way through berthing into the head!!’ OOH, It happened… more often than it should!!!

Then was the ‘Dawn of a new Day!’ The ‘Morning Quarters Drunk Parade’ walking into ranks with your head swirling like the water in that shitter you pulled it out of ten minutes ago!!

“Well would you looky here… a returning load of happy, rollicking 'three sheets to the wind' Crackerjacks! I’m so glad to see your shiny faces in the morning!”

Because all we lived for at that age was getting drunk, getting laid, going broke, and doing it all over again the next payday! The happy-go-lucky sons-a-bitches I grew up with didn't seem to care!! In fact, it was encouraged and the incessant grab-ass that followed was inexhaustible!!!

But in today’s world you get breathalyzers! You’ve got Ken dolls with flat shaved Tinkerbell chests looking like metrosexual runway models!! Too many freaks and not enough circuses I’d say!! If you’re looking at enjoying a life of swashbuckling action and adventure in today’s Canoe Cabaret, you’re living a life of illusion!!!

Drunken Crackerjack Sailors could do amazing things and be extremely entertaining when they wanted to be! You gotta realize… we weren’t just idiots!! We were drunken idiots… and we had fun every inch of the way!!!