‘The Chief and the IRS’

The IRS decides to audit an old Navy BMCM, and summons him to the IRS office. The auditor was not surprised when the Chief showed up with his attorney.

The auditor said, "Well, sir, you have an extravagant lifestyle and only a retirement check, which you explain by saying that you win money gambling. I'm not sure the IRS finds that believable."

"I'm a great gambler, and I can prove it," says the Chief. "How about a demonstration?"

The auditor thinks for a moment and said, "Okay. Go ahead."

The Chief says, "I'll bet you a thousand dollars that I can bite my own eye."

The auditor thinks a moment and says, "It's a bet."

The Chief removes his glass eye and bites it. The auditor's jaw drops.

The Chief says, "Now, I'll bet you two thousand dollars that I can bite my other eye."

Now the auditor can tell the Chief isn't blind, so he takes the bet. The Chief removes his dentures and bites his good eye.

The stunned auditor now realizes he has wagered and lost three grand, with the Chief's attorney as a witness. He starts to get nervous.

"Want to go double or nothing?" the Chief asks. "I'll bet you six thousand dollars that I can stand on one side of your desk, and pee into that wastebasket on the other side, and never get a drop anywhere in between."

The auditor, twice burned, is cautious now, but he looks carefully and decides there's no way this old guy could possibly manage that stunt, so he agrees again.

The Chief stands beside the desk and unzips his pants, but although he strains mightily, he can't make the stream reach the wastebasket on the other side, so he ends up urinating all over the auditor's desk.

The auditor leaps with joy, realizing that he has just turned a major loss into a huge win. the Chief's own attorney moans and puts his head in his hands.

"Are you okay?" the auditor asks.

"Not really," says the attorney. "This morning, when Chief told me he'd been summoned for an audit, he bet me twenty-five thousand dollars that he could come in here and pee all over your desk and that you'd be happy about it!

'Travels Home'

Once a Sailor was traveling home and stopped for a bite to eat after a long deployment! A police officer was sitting beside him as the conversation went something like this …

“Are you going home after a long deployment?”

“Yes, after a year-long deployment.”

… Says the Sailor …

“Anything special you are going home too?”

… Asked the officer …

“My wife gave birth to a boy!”

… The Officer asks …

“Hmmm, wouldn't that make the boy a bastard with you being gone over a year?”

“I know!”

… Replied the Sailor as the officer digs …

“So … ?”

“So what!” … Says the Sailor … “We'll make him join the Police Force!”

'Another Tale From Owyn The Preacher Man'

Every once in a while our ol’ shipmate, Owyn Bradford, tells us a tale or two of the times tossing down suds in some ratty gin joint playing drunken power fantasies and debaucherizing the women folk! It was a hell of a time wasn’t it?!?

Instead of signs written… “Sailors Stay off The Grass,” they should read …

“Do Not Feed The Drunks!”

I guess it was a lack of blood in the ol’ Migoo system, who knows!!!

So whatever happened to the days when everybody carried a lanyard and a knife onboard?!? Here Owyn explains a poignant time in his days being haze grey and underway!! It’s a good account of his past, so enjoy the read…

Hey shippy got a question what with Halloween coming up and all! Got a Sea Story about meeting a Marine at Marilyn's who was in school with me and he gave me a cigarette holder carved out of a Viet Cong’s femur!! You think that's maybe too much over the top?!? Gonna dig it out and take a pic to go with... HaHaHa!!!

Now shippies this ain't no shit! One fine autumn evening I was in Subic, sitting in Marilyn's sucking up Magoos, and I happened to be looking around and at another table when I saw this MO-reen corporal who looked mighty familiar come walking over!!

"Jimmy Joe!"

He looked up, jumped up and stuck out his hand...

"Owyn from high school! DAMN! Sit Down you Squid!"

So we went over old times, told the tales of how we got where we were right then! I bought him a shitload of rounds!! His lighter crapped out and I lit his smoke with my Snoopy lighter... He admired it!! Snoop was big just then in '66 - so I gave it to him!!!

From there we got slobbering drunk! Finally he wobbled to his feet ...

"Good to see you! Hey you been good to me, so here, take this!"

He reached into his pocket and came out with a bone cigarette holder with a little dragon carved around the outside!

"Kinda Hollywood director style ain't it?"

… I said with a laugh …

"Hey you'll be ‘Billy Badass’ with this in your mouth!"

… He shot back …

"Over in 'Nam I had four of these carved out of a piece of Charlie leg bone I brought out of the jungle!"

Well holy shit... Yeah I still got it somewheres around! Gotta dig it out so's I can spark up on Halloween night!!!

Back in the day, when Vietnam was going on and ‘Political Correctness’ wasn't even a bad dream … and we wore seafarers and either white hats or ball caps! There were two things every tar had on his person: a halyard clip key ring and a knife!! The halyard clip, scored from an obliging SM or SM striker (or "appropriated" from the flag bag) was attached to the belt loop!! A boot had one key, the key to his locker!!!  

The LPO had about 'leventy gajillion’ keys and if he were to fall over the side, he'd be shaking hands with Davy Jones faster than you could say "Aye, Aye, Sir!" These rigs caught on nearly everything but they made us look and feel salty, so we put up with the inconvenience!!!

Most liked to hang them on a belt loop aft of the hip to cut down on this difficulty! The knife was a Case or Camillus with a folding marlinspike, or perhaps a 2-blade Case knife and a separate marlinspike, both kept in a leather belt sheath!! Even those who weren’t Boatswainmates loved them, because back then pop tops hadn't come around and everyone needed a way to punch holes in Coke or beer cans!! Some had a Buck One Ten and spent lots of time in berthing getting a razor edge on them!! If you were in tight with a parachute rigger, he might be cajoled into sewing you a belt sheath out of nylon parachute harness material!!!

Keys and knife, worn and displayed together, put you in a special mindset. Some of us, yours truly included, haul them around to this very day! I guess a knife like that would do wonders while helping the cook with a few spuds!!!

… Yep, sharing coffee and trading bullshit stories with fellow dungaree wearing, flee bitten salty bastards… For that I will be eternally grateful!!!

"Paoli's 'Creighton Toad"

Another issue of Jerry Paoli Cartoons brought to you thanks to Carl Breth!

 

Jerry Paoli’s work was popularized by All Hands Magazine back during the late sixties and early seventies!  His artwork graced the pages of All Hands for many years providing for a unique following!

 

Some of Jerry’s work was considered too risqué for the likes of a professionally published squid magazine…

 

In the words of Carl Breth …

“Jerry created a character called Creighton Toad. I remember him talking about how could acne faced, ugly, Southern swabbies get such good looking girls? There are several Creighton Toad cartoons.”

 

(Click on Picture)

So there you have it, the lesser known world of Jerry Paoli’s Creighton Toad! I hope you enjoy his work as much as I do!!!

'Seedy Sailors & Seedy Places'

Anyone remember the “Finding Waldo” books back in the day?!? That’s what it was like to be a sailing man way back when!! You could find a Crackerjack in just about every titty bar and whorehouse within a fifty mile radius of the pier!! You had to relegate yourself to a life of celibacy or fiddle with the professionals of commercial lovemaking … that’s just the way it was!!!

Many ports attract a seedy element… I mean, what’s sailoring without the frills and thrills of a ‘girl in every port!’  And Crackerjack Sailors are prone to gravitate to studies of nympho behavior and large scale depravity of ladies with abnormal bust dimensions!! The kind of places that smell like piss and stale beer!!  The stained velvet carpet usually looked like it hadn’t been changed out since the seventies!!!

If we made it far enough without falling down shitfaced drunk there were titty bars and dens of sins down every road! Crackerjacks love titty bars… go-go dancers… stripper poles… and anything with two boobies attached!! Because there’s nothing like a bunch of gauddamned sailors and marines sitting around a lap dance drinking cheap beer and acting like assholes to pass the night!!!

In an underway environment devoid of civilized feminine influence, restless men began to get vocal and as horniness escalated, vocabulary degenerated and the intent of us Ambassadors to shed peace and goodwill around the world was traded in for pay by the hour sex and plenty of drunkenness along with a pack of smokes!!!  

Rather it was Rosecrans, Santa Fe Avenue in Long Beach, OBT in Orlando or any Red Light District around the Globe, you found Crackerjack Sailors making their cameo debut just like in the movies … ‘cause there’s always a sailor or two in the background of all those old movies!!!

A veteran salt always knows how to make out the best exchange rate when it comes to the labors of the love trade! You’d find several of them in some seedy back alley pay by the hour motel operating no doubt as twenty-four hour whorehouses!!  And other than being a walking petri dish of gauddamned knows what, you could guarantee those ladies would give you your money’s worth!!!

You see, it’s not really love for sale but love for rent… or lease with no option to buy! An old Salt once told me…

“If it floats, flies or FUCKS… it’s cheaper to rent than to own!”

And if you were smart you’d carry a few condoms with the durability of a Goodyear tire! Because when leaving the liberty port, the clap line can seem a mile long…

"I can't understand the fascination you idiots have for those hookers. The bitches carry a million diseases."

"Doc, we're ordained by the Gods to do their work as dedicated emissaries of good faith and diplomacy."

"You’re a bunch of damned idiots who have no gauddamned idea how many shots I’m gonna have to give you in the ass once we get underway!"

There is nothing like standing in line waiting to drop your skivvies and take caliper readings on your manhood so the Doc can play with his petri dish!

I knew a sailor once who’d come back drunker than a skunk with his whites soiled all to hell, bragging about that piece of ass he just bought downtown! His uniform was so tattered and worn the OOD asked if he found it in the pier dumpster!! He went into the head to take a piss and started screaming he thought he caught the clap!!!

“You just got laid two hours ago, what the hell makes you think you caught the clap?”

“I’m trying to pee and it won’t come out!”

… The son-of-a-bitch was so drunk he forgot to take his rubber off and it dried and stuck to his stick! No Shit!! It really happened!!!

Sometimes these dwellings were one of those “mind your own fucking business” kind of places! You could roll up on some pimp looking bloke in the corner sucking on a Swisher Sweet wearing a polyester leisure suit acting as if he owns the place!! They would deal in hookers and other party favors!!!

I mean, I’ve seen some crazy shit in my day, and I’m not advocating this kind of behavior, but I’d went on liberty with some of the boys downtown Chicago on my maiden tour through Great Mistakes and it got pretty rough! A shipmate was enticed by a hooker to get a blowjob in one of them back allies somewhere in the neighborhood of Wrigley Field!! Two other shipmates and I were left on the sidewalk as lookouts while they scurried behind a dumpster to do their thing!!!

Ain’t nothing like standing watch over a shipmate getting head for twenty dineros when you’re young, dumb and full of impressionable stupidity! All he did was moan and groan and make a shout out about us missing out!! That was before he blew his load and came running out of the alley with his wang still hanging out, trying to put his uniform back together…

“Hurry the fuck up, it’s time to get the hell outta  here!”

He cold cocked the whore right between the eyes after launching a pint of goo down her throat, knocking her to the ground and running off!!!

Yes, it could be a shit show out there when there was nothing but horny Crackerjack Sailors grinding up on the nastiest hookers on the block! And every hooker from Hoboken to San Francisco knew when the fleet was in town and they were always willing and ready!! But hookers stateside never look like they do in Playboy or any of them other skin books!! They’re usually over the hill strippers who can’t earn a living wage anymore on the dance floor!!!

But the overseas hookers … now that’s a different story! Places like Subic, Thailand. Wan Chai in Hong Kong and Five Floors of Whores in Singapore are nothing but a supermarket of whores!! You could damn near smell the perfume from all those honeys before the ship set the Sea-n-Anchor Detail!!!

These were an absolute anchorage for Carnal Delight! A cherry boy could learn a thing or two about sex paid by the hour from skilled ladies whose profession depended on it!! If you had two or three hundred peso, “me love you long time, short time anytime no shit” girls were all over you!!!

There was no public relations problem because the only public we were having relations with were the bargirls and Honey Khoes! They advertised competitive prices for co-habitational recreation at highly negotiable rates!! And we were bulletproof when finding most hookers got real lonely when the last midnight liberty boat cleared the pier!!!

There's a lot of great stuff in our nautical sea going history… The ships, the men, the bars, the hookers, faraway ports and God knows what else!  It seems these days too many politically correct blowhards fail to see what used to be considered a young Crackerjack’s obligation to run the streets at any said liberty port and wear out their skivvies with no shame!! But that’s just the way it was I guess, glad I was around to say I’d been there and done that!!!

'A Sailor Meets A Girl At The Bar'

A sailor meets a girl at the bar and asks …

“May I buy you a drink?”

“Okay, but it won’t do you any good!”

… she said …

A little later, he asked …

“May I buy you another drink?”

“Okay, but it won’t do you any good!”

… she replied again …

He invited her up to his apartment and she replied …

“Okay, but it won’t do you any good!”

They got to his apartment and he confessed …

“You are the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. I want you for my wife!”

… she responds …

“Oh, that’s different! Send her in!!!”

'New Virgin Wife ... Yeah Right'

A young Sailor meets the girl of his dreams on the streets of Olongapo where she swears that she’s still a virgin, and he’s just naive enough to believe her…  well sort of!! Trust me, this shit happens!!!

Given the state of moral dilemma and the ration of shit he received from his shipmates, he devised a little test for their wedding night!  Pulling down his skivvy shorts he asked …

“Honey Khoe, can you tell me what this is?”

“A wee-wee!”

… She replied coyly …

Delighted by her innocence, the new husband corrected her gently …

“No, sweetheart, it’s a prick!”

“Uh-huh. It’s a wee-wee!”

… She insisted …

Slightly annoyed, he took her to task.

“It’s time for you to learn a few things, dear. Now this is a Prick!”

“No Way!”

… She retorted …

“It’s not half as big as some of the pricks I’ve seen!”