I’ve written many a long winded, run all over
"hell and back" rant, extolling the virtues of being a young
Crackerjack Sailor in this here Canoe Club. As Navy Sailors do, I got too many
drunk stories to tell. Hell, when it all started, I was only 19 years old and
right out High School, it was just a big adventure to me. Granted I hated it at
the time, but realize now just how great it was and I didn’t even know it.
There were times you’d run into somebody from
your not so distant past. I guess it was the first time I realized what a Small
World we live in. In my first hitch in San Dog while aboard the USS Baglady, I
was at the ‘Scuttlebutt’ at 32nd Street, a place established simply
for the purpose of selling beer to those of us too young to drink outside the
confines of the base.
I was sitting at the bar having a beer with a
shipmate when I spotted another out the corner of my eye I hadn't seen in some
years. I was a bit Pirate eyed at this point but I remembered him as “Salty Dog.” It wasn’t until we started shoot’n the shit
before I realized I didn’t know him from this here Canoe Club, but from way
back in High School. Our Gym teacher, Coach Pospical better known as “Popsicle”
used to call him “Salty Dog” on account of his Cocoa Beach Salty Dog T-shirt he
always wore at gym class. Hell, I didn’t even know he joined the Navy!
His real name was Butch Cadwalder. He was on
the USS Hammond. They called her the “Fanny Maru!” She was a Knox class frigate
just like the Baglady, but based out of Long Beach and in town for work-ups or
some other form of horsing around.
Butch had a great sense of humor and could
cobble bull shit together in a heartbeat. We compared notes of our
escapades on previous night’s run ashore while thinning out our blood until we
were both soberly challenged. That’s the event horizon where your booze compass
kicked in leading you home after becoming black out drunk. I remember him
saying,
“Why spend time being sober except when
absolutely necessary when being piss drunk on a consistent basis is more fun?”
Fun times those were when you get to meet someone from back home…
Then there was my days on the USS Rainier.
One of my closest shipmates, Neil Saucier was a fellow CIWS tech and we spent a
helluva lot of time together. ‘Sauceman’ was a tobacky chewer. I recall the Ol’ Salty Homemade Engineered
Spittoons he would leave lying around in the shop angle irons. I had the
distinct opportunity to swaller some of that stuff out of a Coke can, not
knowing what he had implanted in the bottom… gives you the whirligigs just
thinking about it.
Anyways, I digress …
It wasn’t until years later, I found out that
The Sauceman and his wife were roommates with Patrick Fitzgibbons who was
married to Kim, who I’d went to high school with. Once again, I realized what a
small world we live in.
Later, while onboard the Rainier, we had an
EOD team detached to our unit. One of the fellas onboard went by the name Chuck
Dumar. He was a fellow Firecontrol CIWS tech converting to Boastwainmate as a
source rate for the EOD trade. Getting to know Chuck, we’d pulled liberty
together in a few ports passing foreign beer from mouth to kidney… to bladder …
to urinal. Like Neanderthals we were taking care of the basics. We didn't know
any better and if the truth be known, we only had half a brain cell between the
two of us anyhow…
After a few too many beers and too many
parallel conversations about hometown memories, it occurred to me that we grew
up in the same hometown. Chuck was a few years ahead of me and graduated high
school a year before I got there. But we knew many of the same people back
home. Once again, the world is a small place.
We can sit back and parse out the best and
worst of our days in the ol’ Canoe Club.
But the memories are what makes it the best. We were young testosterone loaded,
crazy as hell, Canoe Club idiots from the same hometown.
We barked at the moon and took no prisoners.
We swung from limb to limb and drank stuff that would dissolve a 16 Inch turret. Too
many young men today fail to see what used to be considered a man's obligation.
They just don’t know what they’re missing…
