‘Open Your Eyes & Ears And Listen Up’

I came across this picture today while on the ol’ internet and found myself reminiscing…

When good ol’ fashioned sailors get together, it doesn't take long for the sea stories to reduce to who did what to how many girls while drink’n so many bottles of some substitute for turpentine to remember that gal with the mole on her ass and that tranny with a five dollar foot long between its legs… You remember… who couldn’t remember that kind’a crap!!!

Yep… big titties, fast women, 99’ bottles of beer on the wall, and even more dames than you got fingers for short time no shit in 72’ hour liberty ports are what your typical sea tales end up all about...

At some juncture, the bullshit gets outt’a hand… and it’s on! The major ‘So there I was’ and ‘You ain’t gonna believe this shit’ kind’a stuff comes out of the wood work!!!

Don’t get me wrong… I’ve told some tales of grandeur and I’ve had some great memories in my day… you spend all your days learning how to be a ‘crackerjack’… the pride, the vernacular identity, camaraderie… liv’n like a pirate ‘two hundred years too late’… then the gaudamned Navy turns all politically correct and you wonder… ‘Who gives a damn anymore…   

But somewhere along the line… something or someone can surprise you… sometimes it’s just the little things. Back on the ‘Mighty Momsen’ I was privileged to serve with a fellow Chief named Javier Perez…

Javier was one of them kind’a fellas who epitomized the ol’ adage “Say what you mean… mean what you say” kind of thing… He was a hard work’n honest to God’ kind’a fellow.

On the way down the East Coast to Panama City, Florida for our big Commissioning Ceremony we took a detour to the good ol’ Naval Base in Norfolk, Virginia… gotta tell you, after all my years in the Navy that one overnight stay was the only time I ever visited the so called biggest naval base in the world… but I regress…

While the mighty Momsen was import over night Javier took me to a local Mexican Cantina for some good grub and a few Tecate beers. As we were seated I took notice to a beautiful mural on the wall of an Aztec Warrior perched over a lovely woman on what looked to be a bed of flowers…

“Javi, that looks like a Mexican makeover of Romeo & Juliet!” 

“Well, in a sense it sort’a is.”

Javier then proceeded to explain the finer side of Mexican culture and Aztec Mythology…

“They say the mountains were once a princess and a prince who were deeply in love with one another. The prince was a brave warrior but the princess’ father insisted he engage in battle with their enemy and come back with the head of their king!  As the princess lie in wait for her beloved prince, a messenger came back with false reports the prince had died in battle. There the princess lay succumbed by her despair and died of a broken heart.  When the prince returned to find his beloved had died, he was grief stricken to the point he took her body to the mountains to lay beside her and breathe his last breath so they could be together for eternity. They remain still today as Iztacchuatl and Popocatpetl  overlooking the valley of Mexico City.  Occasionally Popactpetl will bellow ash to remind those watching… he still lies watching over his beloved Iztcchuatl!!!”

Now a know a lot about sea stories and good ol’ fashioned bullshit but that ain’t no gaudamned horse manure that Javier was feeding me… he knew a little something about what he was tell’n me and I still hold a great appreciation for that story…

It just goes to show you what you can learn from somebody if you open your eyes and ears and listen up to what they’ve got to tell you!!!

In the short time I knew Javier he showed me how to dish up a good Salsa and a few other things too… I’m sure if I hung around long enough he would’a revealed the proper way to down a Tequila Popper or had I been single the appropriate way to sequester a fine young Mexican Maiden… always found’m to be damned pretty & hell’a sassy…

I have no idea where he was earlier in my career, only that it’s a damn shame we rode different ships at different times… Holy Shit Conniptions if I’d met him earlier in my ‘Crackerjack’ days, one-tenth of the stuff in my epic stories of bullshit might not of happened… maybe it’s fortunate I hadn’t or you might not be reading this silly crap right now!!!

So as I take a drink tonight, I say to you Javier…

“Salud and Gracias to my good friend!”

‘A Young Aussie Joins The Navy’

A young Aussie joins the navy. On the day he is about to go to sea, his father warned him to be aware of gay sailors.

"But dad, how will I know?"

"Trust me son, you will know.

After 6 months at sea, the ship comes into port. The father was on the dock waiting for his son. The son, seeing his father, got off the ship and shook his fathers hand.

"Well son,how did it go?"

"Dad, I found out what you ment about gay sailors. One night I was out on deck all alone when a man came by and put his hand on my shoulder so I threw him overboard."

"But how could you tell he was gay?"

"Well, for 3 days he swam behind the boat yelling "THROW ME A BOUY, THROW ME A BOUY"

‘Humor In The Face Of Defeat’

Joe’ Sailor was deployed on a long overseas tour. While he was away he received a letter from his girlfriend. In the letter she explained how she had slept with two other fellas while he had been away and she wanted to break up with him… oh, and she wanted the pictures of herself she gave him back.  So the good ol’ Joe’ Sailor did what any good ‘Crackerjack’ would do…  he went around to his shipmates and collected all the unwanted photos of women he could muster… He then mailed about twenty-five of them pictures (some clothed… some not so much) to his girlfriend with the following note,

“I don’t remember which one you are. Please remove your picture and send the rest back!”

'Anthony Buncum... Another Lost Shipmate'

As we get older one thing rings clear to all of us. At some point… you know you’re gonna have to come face to face with the problematic revelation of your own demise. Now I don’t plan on meeting my maker anytime soon so don’t get your panties all in a wad!!!

It just seems pretty dog-gone evident as the years blow on past a lot of family and friends seem to be crowding up God’s waiting room standing in line for their one way ticket to the other side.  In the past year my mother had gone… my wife’s mother… as well as a few shipmates I had lost touch with over the years…

One in particular shipmate has come up in recent days… not sure how he passed but its’ a shame someone of such fine young vintage and diligence to duty had to expire so soon.  Anthony Buncum was his name… didn’t know him as well as others but he was a helluva shipmate I can assure you!!!

I remember seeing Buncum, Merrill, Shulke and Magner bouncing off the passageways of the ol’ Rainier Lucky No. 7 back in the day… they all seemed like pretty cozy shipmates… swapping sea stories, hang’n out on the mess decks, doing what sailors do best…

I asked a couple of those shipmates if they could let me know of some of their fondest memories of Anthony, this is what I got and it’s word for word, beautifully written and no need to adlib…

“I met Tony a long, long time ago… during the Westpac of 96-97. We became good friends, whether I was working in the pit, or doing some temp duty up in Hazmat. And while we had the occasional disagreement, we always managed to get over it and be buds again. I remember tooling around in the old Chevy pickup he had, listening to whatever passed for music in those days. There are stories of things happening that can never be told in detail. Buncum, Magner, and I eventually got an apartment together off base... the world’s worst bachelor pad. A lamp with no shade next to the front door, a couch we picked up on a roadside. But it was ours, and we partied. Then came the time when he started dating a gal living in Vancouver, WA. So, plenty of road trips down there on the weekends, venturing out to explore Portland during the Rose Festival. Eventually, he married her just prior to Westpac 98-99. And it was just a month or so into deployment when he found out he was going to be a father. He couldn't have been happier. And even after I left the ship, I still kept in contact, as much as I could. I had the good fortune to talk to him on the phone just a month ago on Sept 4th. We just BS'ed like it was the good old days. Sure, things had changed in his life, as it does in anyone's. But it was good to talk to my old shipmate, a man I could call my brother. And in the end, I can only hope that his heart found peace. We all must go, sometime. Sometimes, that time comes too early. But I have to believe that it brings an end to those things that hurt ones soul. I'm sad that I won't have the opportunity to talk to my shipmate again, but take solace in knowing that his pain is over, and hope that his heart is at peace now. Life is not an easy road to travel by any means, and it's even harder to travel it feeling alone. But, now he has a new road, with others that have gone before him. Thank you Tony, for being one of a few friends I had back then.”

Jeremy Shulke wrote those breathtaking words as he remembered our shipmate.  I read in his obituary that he was a proud young American who loved his family and his country… and will be sorely missed by all!!!

We hope to meet again on that great ship in the sky… until then we’ll have to keep each other company down here while your keep’n the decks swabbed and the boat in ship shape condition for our arrival… fair winds and following seas dear friend… we hope to meet up again someday soon!!!

‘Naïve As A Dofelmire Weiner’

I was digg’n through a box of old stuff from my younger years the other day and found quite a bit of monumental recollection pact away in them ol’ boxes… mostly  from high school and my ol’ Canoe Club days! Some ol’ letters from a girl telling me she was true... loved me more than anything and would wait a million years just to feel my arms around her again... Boy I was dog-gone naïve in those days!!!

It didn't matter, because no nineteen-year-old in his right mind had any business knowing what was good for him… If he did, he’d never get to experience the kind’a shit I did in my day… when I didn’t have a care in the world and felt like I’d live forever with every beat of that young heart!!!

I remember back in Boot Camp not to use stall number four in the Mess Hall during service week cause you’ll catch a case of the crabs off the toilet if you go there… Anybody in their right mind should know that you’d been sanitized, immunized, deloused, scrubbed down and bleached over within the first three gaudamned days in that asylum… but what did we know at nineteen!!!

I keep thinking back in ‘A’ school learning about motors & generators and our instructor introducing himself with a speech about the ol’ days in the Mekong Delta… asked him if he’d ever killed anybody in Vietnam!!! At the time I didn’t realize what an ‘asshole’ question that was… It wasn’t crass or judgemental… just a dumb young fella’ who was a little too damned naïve to know any better…

Then there was the gal I had a few one night flings with down in San Diego… she led me to believe she was pregnant and having an abortion… if I didn’t give her Two-hundred and Fifty dollars she was gonna go to my Commanding Officer… growing up Catholic I spent seventeen years feel’n guilty about that whole abortion debacle… As the years flashed by, I became one of the Chiefs of the fella who set me up with that gal… He told me a story how an ol’ gal friend he used to have would fake ex-boyfriends in believing she was pregnant and needed money for abortions… son-of-a-bitch must’a forgot about me… Oooh, that son-of-a-bitch was Gene Blystone… if anyone wants to know… but he got his in the end… some of you out there know what I mean…

Soooo, it’s not any wonder a young whipper snapper gets to the fleet and they play all sorts of tricks and banter… like the mail buoy watch!!!

You stood there in the ice splitt’n wind in your trusty, worn out ol’ foul weather jacket donned with a weathered raggedy-ass watchcap, overlook’n God's great ocean for that golden buoy one-thousand nautical miles in the middle of nowhere…  

Come on now… who should’nt know any better… but it happens again and again with the BT punch, Bucket O’ Steam, Thousand yards of gig line, or a gallon of relative bearing grease…

But the worst lessons were the ones learned on liberty…

As you know from previous stories… I had my L-o-L-a moment… almost got pummeled in the PI… got suckered outta some beer money now and again…

But noth’n was ever quite like the ‘Doubled Down Dofelmire experience’!!!

We had this young Crackerjack named Dofelmire back on the ol’ Baglady… not many quite as naïve as this fella! He was short and two inches too round for your average Crackerjack Seaman… and smiled all the gaudamned time. Being short & dumpy with a name like Dofelmire to rhyme with Oscar Meyer… he naturally got the shitty end of the nickname scale…

♪♪“OOOh, I wish I were a Dofelmire Weiner… Then everyone would be in love with  me!!!”♪♪

One weekend liberty on the town in San Dog and poor Dofelmire ran into a so called ‘merchant seaman from Yakistan’ who was looking for Hotel San Diego so he could buy a big tittied hooker with the wad of cash he pulled outt’a his pocket!!!

He promised our young protagonist to let him hold on to his wad of cash while he went to the hotel so the young hooker could not steal his money… oh but in kind, the young Dofelmire would have to give him his shiny wrist watch to make sure  he didn’t run off…

About this time myself and a fellow shipmate showed up smell’n something fishy… as we investigated with a bit of good ol’ American Navy force… the so called wad of cash was nothing more than a few bills rolled up on top of a bunch’a bullshit newspaper clippings to look like a real load of mullah!!!

A few weeks went by and young Dofelmire didn’t fare so well on his next incident…

Sometime after liberty went down he headed off the ship to the base laundry connected to the McDonalds/NEX… after two or three hours the young Dofelmire headed back to the ship…

After a night on the town I got back to the boat to find Dofelmire in the Crews Lounge with a ‘Big ol’ Black Eye’…

“What the hell happened to you Dofelweiner???”

“I got pummeled and my clothes got stolen on the way back from doing laundry!”

“You got mugged doing your laundry on base??”

“Yeah, the guy asked for money and when I didn’t have any he punched me in the face and took my laundry!!”

That poor bastard… you know, we gave him a lot of shit as all loving shipmates do… but to get an eye full and your laundry taken too… poor bastard had to buy new skivvies and uniform items… if I remember, we all pitched in… cause that’s what shipmates do!!!

I’ll bet Dofelmire, where ever he’s at now, isn’t so gaudamned gullible nowadays… but I feel ya brother… we were all dumb and happy at one point in our silly lives!!!

Rest assured with what I know now… I’d want to forget it all and relive it again… NO REGRETTS!!!

♪♪“OOOh, I wish I were a Dofelmire Weiner… Then everyone would be in love with  me!!!”♪♪

'Why Don't You Two Go Out And Screw'

It's the Spring of 1957 and a sailor goes to pick up his date. When he goes to the front door, the girl's father answers and inviteshim in. "Carrie's not ready yet, so why don't you have a seat?," he says.

"That's cool" says the sailor.

Carrie's father asks the sailor what they're planning to do.

The sailor replies politely that they will probably just go to the soda shop or a movie.

Carrie's father responds "why don't you two go out and screw? I hear all the kids are doing it."

Naturally, this comes as a quite a surprise to the young sailor - so he asks Carrie's Dad to repeat it.

"Yeah," says Carrie's father, "Carrie really likes to screw; she'll screw all night if we let her!"

Well, this just made the sailor's eyes light up, and his plan for the evening was beginning to look pretty good.

A few minutes later, Carrie comes downstairs in her little poodle skirt and announces that she's ready to go. Almost breathless with anticipation, the young sailor escorts his date out the front door.

About 20 minutes later, Carrie rushes back into the house, slams the door behind
her, and screams at her father:

" DAMMIT DADDY! IT'S CALLED THE TWIST!!!"

‘Nights Coming Back’

How many of my ol’ Shipmates remember dabbl’n in the trade of bullshit & babe watching over a cold beer… only to find ourselves going back to the ship empty handed half the time!?!? Now that I think about it… what respectable young lady in her right mind would want to hook up with a broke, idiot, ‘Crackerjack’ who’s always underway and ends up chas’n tail at every port?

Those of us broke idiots going on liberty went topside, crossed the brow and disappeared into the night for a dozen or so buck fifty bottles of suds at the ol’ 32nd Street Naval Base EN Club in San Dog. 

Any of you fellas out there remember the walk back from the ol’ Scuttlebutt EN Club… later updated and called ‘Club Metro?

Remember stopping at the Snack Shack next to Del Taco for cheap burritos, hostess cupcakes and a nekkit girlie magazine?!?! The kind of reading material that got passed around the mess decks and berthing compartments from shipmate to shipmate until the staples popped out and the pages got stuck together… the major publishers of said garbage were the likes of ‘Playboy’, ‘Penthouse’, ‘Hustler’, ‘Club’…etc… etc…

How many out there do you know who can voluntarily projectile vomit an Extra-Large strawberry shake fifteen feet across the pier at 0130 hours in the morning just for shits and giggles… Waddel & Rhodabarger, I know you remember…

Remember stumbl’n back so gaudamned drunk and full of draft beer you couldn’t remember what pier you were moored too? FF 1069 in big white letters… That was my post mark back to the rack… God forbid you were tied up to another boat of the same make & model… you could find yourself waking up to a night stick and a possible security alert?

Remember stumbl’n across the pier… tak’n a midnight whiz next to the dumpster… here kitty, kitty, kitty…

“That ain’t no Cat Smithee… that’s a gaudamned Pier Rat!!!”

The biggest ones you ever saw!!!

Then it was time to navigate up the brow… you & your shipmate sing’n socially unacceptable songs of nautical lore…

“Rekkest pemission to coss the Patio Daddio!”

Noth’n pissed off a craggy ol’ Salt Lifer than disrespecting his Quarterdeck…

But nothing was funnier than shit to a young derelict Seaman…

“You shitheads gonna be okay, or am I gonna have to get the Duty Master-At-Arms and Corpsman to put your asses to bed?”

Never had to be put away wet in my rack… lucky I guess!!!

But three sheets to the wind and falling over my own damned feet, I had plenty of moments bouncing off bulkheads and tripping over knee knockers trying to find our way down to the crews lounge or the berthing head!!! Always making it in time for a late night with Arsenio Hall or the tail end of a good game of spades, gin-rummy… or whatever insanity the animals cooked up for the night… and if you got there early enough there might be some left over pizza waiting for whoever needed it…

It was always the same...  loud exchanges of banter, ragging the duty rover while wandering about, some idiot praising the merits of Conseco and the Oakland A’s to a room full of drunk ass squids who could give a shit less... 

Can’t remember how many nights we passed out on the lounge couch with pictures of big breasted women strung out on the table… ever so often a trip to the head blow’n chunks of last nights dinner… because too much draft beer can do that to a fella!

I remember waking up once while PCSN was burn’n a gaudamned hole in my forearm with a cigarette while I was passed out in the lounge! I think I still got that gaudamned scar! At least the son-of-a-bitch didn’t write “I’m Gay” with a sharpie on my forehead… them would’a been fight’n words at that point… cause nobody likes a wise ass!

We were coming up in the world from boyhood to manhood! Looking back I remember how much I thought I hated it… despised it… I wasn’t aware of it yet but I joined the best gaudamned brotherhood of a lifetime… Those were the days!