Two sailors
were chatting over a beer while out on liberty.
First Swabby:
“Why did you join the Navy?”
Second Swabby:
“I didn’t have a wife and I loved war. So I joined. How about you? Why did you
join the Navy?”
First Swabby:
“I had a wife and I loved peace. So I joined.”
Streaking is defined by the Webster Dictionary, as an "informal run naked in a public place so as to shock or amuse others." Like a drunken Will Ferrell in that movie “Old School,” it invokes a younger time when streaking was a common part of my repertoire. Allie, Liz, Terry and many others can probably tell you how I was never shy even in High School about stripping down butt nekkit and running the gambit rather it was mooning a cop or streaking through the Food World parking lot. All I needed was a dare and some liquid courage and I was on my way to showing my lily-white ass to the world! Things didn’t change much after enlisting into the world’s finest Navy. Before tale hook and all the politically correct horse manure they shoved down our throats, being butt nekkit in public was about as natural as chasing women … chasing women butt nekkit! Now there’s something for ya!!!
I was
just reading about a young fella out of Norfolk about three or four years ago
gett’n tasered and corralled by the local constable outside of Busch Gardens in Williamsburg, Va. Apparently, he
had a little too much liquor and possibly some illegal substances while deciding to run around butt nekkit in the park parking lot. Seems like an odd place
to get frisky, but I’m down with it. Unfortunately, he got charged with
resisting arrest among a few other things and the Navy Brass didn’t take too
kindly to his lack of décor.
Back in our day, streaking butt nekkit didn’t seem to be that big of a deal. Here’s the scenario …
Eight or so of us would be drinking at a local watering hole gett’n
all piss drunk, and before you knew it, we were out on a streak. Have you ever
been to Lombard in San Francisco? I have… butt nekkit all the way down the most
crooked street in the world!
On many
of our excursions, the girls were pretty drunk and often in on it too as they
would heckle, hoot, and holler. I remember a few giggles and "oh my Gods"
in the Denim and Diamond parking lot out of Alameda with our pricks flopping
around in the night air! The cops put a stop to it and read us all the riot
act. But I suppose there were just too many of us to take in, so we all got a
warning shot across the bow.
I
remember an incident in Jebel Ali (Gerbal Alley) where a bunch of us went on an
MWR Bedouin excursion in the dunes eating barbequed goat burgers and watching
some belly dancers while we drank formaldehyde disguised as beer and ran butt
ass nekkit up and down some dunes for the fun of it. Then there was that time in Hong Kong drinking
that gauddamned awful Tiger Beer and eating God only knows what they put in the
food just to find ourselves once again daring one another to run up and down
the alleys of the Wan Chai district butt ass nekkit. What about the Sembawang Seaman
Center in Singapore where we spent Christmas skinny dipping in the pool at 100°F
and 100% humidity with them little Filipina hostesses serving at our beck and call. We didn’t hear no whining, bitching, or complaining about inappropriate
behavior or other horse pucky. Anybody who knew me back in those days can tell
you I ain’t about to make this up. This ain’t no bag of horseshit I’m feed’n
you. It’s just who we were and it was what it was … the good, bad, and the ugly.
Me, Smithee,
Mitchell, Ricoh, the boys on the Rainier, and many others had many a beer and a
barmaid spending wonderful evenings getting loaded chasing the ladies and gett’n
naked as a jaybird in some of the strangest places around the world. The ol’
Canoe Club has a million no-shit stories that fill the memory banks of us old
salts. I’ve got a million of these stories stored up in a categorical Rolodex file in my brain housing. The note cards are a bit yellowed with a few stains here
and there and the ink might be a little blurred, but I can tell you one thing
that ain’t no shit… The ol’ Canoe Club set the stage for shenanigans that provided
belly laughs and tears for a guy like me. Ahhh you should have been there. I didn’t know
it or even appreciate it at the time. But those are some of the best-damned
memories a fella could ever ask for!
Like that old seventies song used to say ...
♪♫•*¨*•.¸¸ ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪ "We had joy we had fun, we were streaking in the sun, but the cops got their guns and shot us in the buns" ♪♫•*¨*•.¸¸ ¸¸.•*¨*•♫♪
 |
An old
1st class sailor, perfectly rolled white hat on the back of his head and three
rows of service ribbons on his chest went to a bar and ordered a drink. He had
4 hashmarks on his sleeve and was dressed in his best set of gabardine dress
“blues”, complete with the fancy liberty cuff embroidery and 13 button flap
dragons. As he sat there sipping his whiskey, a young lady sat down next to
him. After she ordered her drink, she turned to the sailor and asked him,
'Are you a real sailor?'
To which he replied, 'Well, I've spent my whole life on the water, riding
hurricanes out on the surface and sweating it out trying to dodge the bad guys,
so I guess I am.'
After a short while, he asked her what she was.
She replied, 'I've never been on a ship so I'm not a sailor, but I am a
lesbian. I spend my whole day thinking about women. As soon as I get up in the
morning I think of women, when I eat, shower, watch TV, everything seems to
make me think of women.' A short while later she left and the swabbie ordered
another drink.
Later a couple sat down next to him and asked,
'Are you a real sailor?'
To which he replied, 'I always thought I was, but I just found out that I'm a
lesbian.”
Sailors have gained a reputation the world over. Rather Good, Bad, or Ugly … the reputation of a Sailor cannot be white-washed by today’s politically correct do-gooders! There is a reason why as the old saying goes, we “drink like a sailor, cuss like a sailor, spend money like a sailor, and have a girl in every port!” From the local advertisement to the patches on our jackets to the welcome home signs awaiting us on the pier, we have been characterized the world over. They even have played Sailors on Broadway! I say don’t resist the temptation, just join us in our debauchery … he, he!!! Remember the “Off Limits” bulletins they used to post before liberty at any given port? Remember how that seemed to be the place every sailor ended up? Well, here’s a little ditty for you in remembrance of your sailor’n days gone past…
I’ll
dive for five,
I’ll
bend for ten.
No
muff’s too tuff
That
I’ve been in.
‘Cause
I’m a sailor
And
I’ve got class.
If
you don’t like me,
Just
bite my ass!
I
hope you enjoy the pics…
A Sailor
was drinking at the bar in the EN Club when two buddies rolled in to join
him. They had half a dozen drinks together. Then one of them glanced at the
clock and realized it was time to go! The two buddies shook hands with the
shipmate and raced out to board the ship before it got underway.
The
Sailor just sat there and laughed.
“What’s
so funny?”
… asked
the bartender …
“Crazy
drunks … They came to see me off on that very ship!”
Over the
years the Navy has had some whimsical postcards made up to delight the families
of Sailors & Gobs in faraway lands. I hope you enjoy this little treasure
chest of nautical nostalgia…
]
Two
WestPac widows watched a shipload of their sailors head off on WestPac. One
beauty bawled…
“I hate
to see them go. I wonder what they’ll do away out there?”
Her
friend explained…
“You
wonder what they’ll do? How long have you been married to a sailor?”
This one comes from an old Salt of a Submariner by the name of Dex Armstrong. He tells of the “Lucy Lights” as being named after a rather amorous third-class dental tech who bestowed her favors rather liberally among lonely E-3s a long way from home. I hope you enjoy this story as many of his no-shitters bring a smile …
During
some dust-up with Mr. Castro's folks to the south, we were somewhere off South Carolina
giving unworthy surface craft ping time. We got a change in op orders
instructing us to put into someplace nobody ever heard of... Port Everglades,
Florida. We had no charts for Florida, but being highly resourceful
bluejackets, we called for an electrician who came from Pompano Beach. Mr.
'I've got your problem solved' comes to the bridge and explains to our
assemblage of complete idiots that he was God's unrecognized gift to harbor
pilots. He knows these waters like the route to grandmother's house. He tells
the skipper not to worry, that he and his ol' man have done so much fishing off
Lauderdale, that he (Mr. God's gift to navigation) could lay us alongside
wearing a galvanized bucket over his head. The skipper said,
"Damn
glad to hear that... We're going in at night. Just need you to tell us which
channel to take and we'll go in by lights and channel markers."
I was
starboard lookout... No one asked my opinion because no one cared about my
opinion... Because to have an opinion on the subject, I would have to have
rented one or invented one and last, E-3s didn't have a dog in the fight. I did
notice that when the Old Man said we were going in at night, our 'all-knowing'
second class electrician's butt nearly chewed a hole in the material between
his hip pockets. It is not every day that a non-rated guy gets to witness the
Old Man in consultation with the ship's master bullshit artist... And
swallowing large chunks of Alice in Wonderland pony dookey.
What was
the worst thing that could happen? Run aground on some sandbar and spend a
couple of weeks at the beach? What the hell!
After
sundown, we began our approach... Right off the bat, Mr. 'know everything'
popped a dent in his credentials...
"Ah,
sir, I think the Flamingo Beach and Tennis Club should be right about
there."
He
pointed. We studied the area through 7x50s and unless the beach and tennis club
had disguised itself as a tank farm next to some kind of surplus crap storage
yard, the 'pathfinder of the sea' was a little off.
For the
better part of the next 45 minutes, our second class Florida geography mate
pointed out a whole lot of stuff nobody could verify.
Then he
said it...
"Capt'n,
somewhere out here is this great big concrete thing... We used to tie our boat
to it and fish off it."
"BIG
CONCRETE THING!?! ALL STOP... ALL BACK ONE THIRD! WHAT KIND OF BIG CONCRETE
THING?"
Somewhere
up ahead in this nocturnal crapshoot was this reinforced concrete structure...
The highly practiced E-3 eavesdropping ear immediately picked up the
essentials... It was big... Somewhere between the size of a Greyhound bus and
South Dakota... It wasn't painted. To six men standing in pitch-black darkness,
this clue didn't do a hell of a lot to solve the mystery. It was big... We
already knew that.
It was
out there... It was big... It was concrete and you could fish off it. That is,
you could fish off it if it didn't have the hull of a fleet snorkel diesel boat
wrapped around it.
"Bring
up the Lucy light."
The Lucy light was one of the most valuable pieces of equipment on Requin. Lucy was a second-class dental tech with a world-class bosom. A smiling blond who belonged totally... Exclusively... Entirely... One hundred percent to all the guys 25 and younger on Requin who were not in permanent relationships. I've never quite figured out if Lucy was a super-patriot who recognized the emotional sacrifice of our elite volunteer service or was just a high-capacity nymphomaniac. Whatever she was, she could distribute favors to three-quarters of the duty section during a battery charge.
Naval
regulations require that all personnel in the duty section remain on board to
be immediately available if all the pier rats gang up with the intention of high
jacking a worn out American submarine to trade to the Dutch for cheese.
Alongside duty is the most boring thing on the planet, short of watching night
crawlers mate.
To liven
things up, darling Lucy, the patron saint of Hogan's Alley, would set up her
playhouse in the back seat of somebody's car in the pierhead parking lot. At
the same time, someone not then on watch would haul our xeon (sounds like
'zeee-on') searchlight to the bridge and pedestal mount it trained on Lucy's
nest of non-rated pleasure and wondrous delight. Then we would run an
industrial electrical cord from the focused light mounted on the bridge to a
power source in the conn, with a 'make and break' toggle conveniently placed by
the sail door where the guy standing topside watch could reach it.
Here's
how it worked. When Lucy opened for business, lover #1 would latch onto a
sharpshooter bucket and cross the brow, appearing to be heading for a trash
dump. Upon reaching Lucy's luxurious love machine, Mr. Numero-Uno would park
the sharpshooter bucket next to the car to allow observation via attack scope
to determine questions relating to 'vacancy' or 'no vacancy'.
Members
of Lucy's love club knew the rule... No one visits Lucy without being passed
the bucket... Thus, avoiding the embarrassment of mid-performance interruption.
Should
the O.D. require the presence of the engaged crew member... The topside watch
could flip the key on the Lucy light, creating a Zeus thunderbolt that would
damn near blister a bare butt and set the upholstery on fire. Read by one
understanding the linguistics of the after battery, this visual signal
indicated that the presence of the duty wandering trash dumper was required.
Please return with a theatrical prop bucket.
There was
a time when revelation of the foregoing could have resulted in its untimely
demise... But with the end of the Cold War, Lucy's generous and willing
contribution should not go unrecognized... And there are still middle-age coots
who rode SS-481 in their previous incarnation who... On a quiet summer night
can still smell that wonderful dime-store perfume... Taste that red lipstick...
And visualize rhinestone berets and stockings draped over a rearview mirror
and life was good.
So there
we were... Five men and petty officer Pinocchio standing on the bridge scanning
the darkness for some large hardened cement object residing somewhere forward
of bow bouyancy... Range and bearing not quite clear.
The Lucy
light arrives... ILLUMINATION!!
There,
two football fields away was this concrete formation the size of a couple of
Texaco stations. Hit bows on at ten to fifteen knots, it would have been well
capable of compressing the entire contents of the forward torpedo room along
with most of the wardroom, up against the control room bulkhead.
I knew
instantly that if God did not require bullshit artists to tell the truth every
now and then... We would have french-kissed one hell of a load of reinforced
concrete.
Lucy,
this old bluejacket still loves you... Give anything to hear you shout,
"Yes...
Yes... Oh, YES!!..." Into a Chevy ceiling light, one more time...
It’s that time again where we celebrate our pin-up models to keep our morale up on those long and arduous journeys! I hope you fellow shipmates enjoy what’s in store for this month's collection…
'
