'Stripping Decomms'



Any of you ol’ shipmates ever get to drive along the water’s edge in Bremerton… up along PSNS?!? What a bunch’a old cobweb coated recollections for Crackerjacks who’d been put out to pasture!! That fleet of rust buckets sits like a gaggle of nuns in a whorehouse… about as useless as tits on a boar-hog!! At least that’s what they look like from the outside!!!

You see… those mothballed hulks of rusted metal served a very good purpose back in my days on the Chucky ‘V’ and Rainier ‘Lucky N°7!’ While they sat wait’n to be memorialized as some Podunk museum sold to the highest bidder… referred to the Gillette Razor Blade Scrap Yard Factory… or sent to Davey Jones Locker as a barnacle encrusted artificial reef, those rust buckets were a navy man’s nirvana for spare parts!!!

Once they got their death certificates and decommissioned... they were like a floating wonderland of repair shops, pipes, valves, davits, and left over machined whatchamacallit doohickeys the likes you’d never seen before! Like shepherds with shears we’d cut off anything salvageable and haul it away!!!

I learned the tricks of the trade when I first set foot onboard the ‘Chucky V’ while resting high in dry-dock! With all the welding, hammering, needlegunn’n, priming & painting going on by the shipyard, we had all the time in the world to head over for some cumshaw!! The ol’ Canoe Club was starting to draw down as ships the likes of the Long Beach, Parche, Truxtun, Pyro & others were on a skeleton crew ready to be dismissed!!!

Supply made us fill out requisitions that resembled Sumerian Cuneiform but it didn’t matter much to a bunch’a rowdy young Crackerjacks!  Things that hadn’t been pre-approved could perhaps be pre-arranged for appropriate consideration… I think Radar and Klinger from M.A.S.H. were masterminds of such debacles!! A carton of smokes… some nudie mags… sex with someone’s sister… it hardly mattered!! It was a great source of cumshaw and a chance to shoot the shit with other shipmates on other boats!! The idea was to locate an item or items of comparable value, and exchange them for what you needed!!!

And when the skeleton crews disbursed… we kept on visiting and kept on taking as we’d climb in the skin of old ships like sharks in an organized feeding frenzy... transporting screwdrivers, wrenches, crowbars...you name it, and joined in on a regular parts removal merrymaking revelry on an A-gang spare parts orgy!!

“See if you can get some door gasket material…”

“We need a wave guide dry air pressure gauge…”

“… some wingnuts & dogg’n wrenches…”

“… any saltwater strainers… toggle pins for handrail stanchions…”

“You think you can find any fire hoses laying around?!?”

Hell, you went aboard with a gauddamned assorted grocery list! Because sometimes, removing chunks from ol’ rust buckets was the best way to get spare parts… we called it cannibalizing!!

We’d climb aboard and find our way inside a ship wondering through a maze of dark passageways and compartments looking for a heaping pile of gold!! Oh the wonderment of walking into a compartment with more electrical gedunk whizzbang stuff than you’d ever seen… There were special synchro driven ionized heterodyned dickey madoos… static & dynamically tested thingamajigs… electrically phased thingumabobs… super-duper whizbangs & whatchamacallit doohickeys that I had no idea if it was attached upside-down, downside-up, inboard or outboard or whatever the hell kind’a board!!  Just had to make sure you brought one of them reprehensible cutt’n torch technicians and a pair of bolt cutters so we could give the ol’ rust bucket a hysterectomy and transplant those machined giblets on a newer much improved ship!!!

When we got back to our respective ships we must’ve looked like Ali Baba and the The Forty Thieves with all that crap! And once our spare parts bins reached Guinness Book proportions the CNO decided to venture into this thing called ‘Lean Manufacturing’ … you know… TQL, Sigma Six & that sort’a thing and all the raping of old Hulls with varicose veins & saggy tits went to the wayside!!!

AAAAAH Hell… I’m sure it’s still going on to some extent! Though before I hung up my hat, I remember tell’n my young ones how in the ol’ days we actually used synchro & servos… power amplifiers… tubes & solid state devices to move things that go boom instead of all these gauddamned ones & zeroes you can fit on a microchip the size of your thumb!!!

… And to the outside observer, passing by the Bremerton Boneyard… where the zip codes of rusty ol’ hulls of mothballed rust buckets that included some of the greatest ships the world has ever known… those mighty behemoths of power are being eaten to death… rivet by rivet… layer by layer… slowly drifting into oblivion while relaxing on their barnacle encrusted bottoms… just like the ol’ coots who once road on them!!!

‘Stand By For Heavy Rolls’

If there’s one thing that all us true ol’ salty Crackerjacks have in common it’s the love of King Neptune’s beautiful deep blue and the wonders that come with it! Have you ever been on the ‘IO’ when the surface was as smooth as glass… with flying fish over the bow & porpoise both port & starboard… bearing witness to three or four water spouts as far as the eye could see?!? It’s Gods great gift to seafarers around the world!!  

Then there’s the other side of things! Where Gale Winds & Heavy Seas were like nature’s fury! The kind of force where everything from Timbuktu to Bumfuck Egypt gets tossed around to the tune of a giant mambo dance while laundry bags… cables & anything else hanging under the sun was swing’n back & fro like a pair of monkey balls!! The ship would bounce like a cork in a bathtub as the latest make and mod of greenhorn shipmates would turn to their racks with a penchant weakness for motion sickness!!!

“Stand by for Heavy Rolls.... Batten all Hatches and secure all Gear Adrift."

Yes… these were the Ride’m Cowboy style dancing with the devil raging seas! There’s nothing like salt spray and ocean turbulence to make for a good night’s sleep!! Tearing through saltwater, full speed ahead, slicing like a flat spoon with that bulbous sonar dome crash’n through the waves!! It was like a crazy roller coaster ride in the wild blue yonder!!!

Waves crashing down from every direction… getting caught in the trough… the deafening sounds of waves hitting the hull! Junk you hadn't seen for months came falling out from under racks, angle irons, vents & overhead lights!! Anything from nudie mags… to happy socks… to dried up bricks of hashish from deployments gone past!! Things not bolted, welded, or somehow secured for sea became airborne missile hazards that could do a cha-cha dance on your nogg’n!! Never mind the valve stems, firemain handles, pipes & gauges that played hooky on your cranium!!!

Then there was the rain topside… the rain was like ice picks on your face! It was even worse at night in Dog Zebra darken ship conditions!! I could’a done without all that shit!!!

My first ship was a frigate… a Knox Class… the USS Baglady! I remember taking heavy rolls wondering if we were gonna capsize?!? Someone once told me those frigates were designed to tip over the stack when the boat took more than a Sixty Degree role?!? Hell… I don’t know, figured it was probably more let’s bullshit the new guy kind of fun… like the Captain’s Crank, a ‘BT’ Punch or blow’n the ‘MPA’!!

But my most memorable experience was in the Aleutians on the ol’ Baglady! I was the MK68 Director Tracker afforded the privilege of heading above decks in Kapok & Rain Gear to relieve the watch!! The weather decks were secured for all non-essential personnel and being in the Aleutians in the director was the most wretched, thankless, cold, dark and never-ending job in the Firecontrol world!! I had never been so gauddamned cold in my entire life… At times I think my veins resembled the likes of an Icy machine!!!

From the Director I got a front row seat right above the Signal Bridge watching ‘green water’ crash over the bow as it pierced through the waves submerged ten or fifteen feet! One moment the bow is buried deep in a giant swell… the next it’s popping up skyward pointing at the heavens above!!!

"Gunplot, Director... Hey when’s my relief showing up? I’m gett’n tossed around like a rag doll!”

“Director, Gunplot… Yeah, more like gett’n tossed around like a salad… who you got up there with you?!?”

“Yeah, yeah, fuck you and the horse you rode in on!!”

And so it went… like an idiot on a mechanical bull seemingly disregarding Newton’s laws on gravity while bouncing around like Richard gauddamned Simmons doing flamboyant musical aerobics with fat guys and the wind blow’n like a cry’n coyote in my ear!!

“Director, Gunplot … … Director, Gunplot … …   Director, Gunplot…  Are we in today or are you just ignoring me?”

“Gunplot, Director… it’s colder than Eskimo Pussy up here… and my nuts have drawn up my ass so tight I couldn’t reach them with a knitting needle!”

“What’s wrong… you feel like you’ve been stuck on the tilt-a-wheel for too long?”

“Oh yeah, I’m having more fun than a gauddamned tornado in a trailer park you fuckers!”

Those cozy asses down in Gunplot always liked to get your goat… all they did was sit around listening to music, chain smok’n & scratching their asses…

“Gunplot, Director… can I get a relief for a head break, I’m dancing around like a shak’n dog shitting hammer handles up here and my eyeballs are float’n I gotta pee so bad!”

“Director, Gunplot… you don’t need no truck stop… you got a piss bottle up their!”

“… Yeah, last time you fuckers put Icy Hot around the rim… I didn’t pee the same for three days!”

“Director, Gunplot… you about two bricks shy of a full load?”  

“… Come on man, I feel like I’m giving birth to a gauddamned porcupine!”

“… I see your point but I still think you’re full of shit!”

The love never got any better between shipmates… but it didn’t matter much at that point! Hell I was so far down the food chain I could feel the algae nipp’n at my dingleberries!!

As a young Crackerjack you get hassled a lot… it just went with the territory, the low man on the totem pole! Hell I  never understood the point in having a director tracker in such heavy seas… made about as much sense as a tail gunner in the space shuttle!! I was taking a thirty to forty foot elevator ride up and down every swell!!!

With all that up & down… up & down… I think the screws got more air time than Howard Stern…

“Gunplot, Director… I’m bouncing around like a pinball up here! One more trough like that and we’ll be one tilt short of a rudder if you know what I mean!?!”

“Director, Gunplot… Did you say on tit short of an udder or one tilt short of a rudder?!?”

“… You know I’ve learned something up here all alone in the dark… no matter how hard you guys beat me down, I’m still able to get it up!” 

“…. Catching a stiff breeze up there are you Danny Boy?”

“… You old fuckers, always calling a gale force hurricane sized wind a stiff breeze!”

“… The rougher the seas, the smoother the sail!”

“… You fuckers are stuck on stupid!”

Yeah, normally I wouldn’t of got away with talking trash to my Workcenter Sup. or anyone else in the division for that matter but under the circumstances they gave me enough slack… besides at that moment… as far as I was concerned, I was the only one that mattered tethered to a gyrating spindle on the upper decks in a zillion knots of wind… dress out in a neon orange kapok jacket & rain gear soaked in salt water look’n like a giant ‘Stayfree Maxi-pad’!!!  

Yeah… there’s nothing like being tossed around in Mother Nature’s angry fury!  Nothing like bouncing off lockers, DC equipment & angle irons like a tennis shoe in a washing machine!! We must’a been nuttier than a port-a-potty at a peanut festival… but what did we know?!? All in all look’n back it was a hell of a lot of fun acting like a bunch of idiots in a log roll’n contest!! Nothing like grown men piss’n in the wind some having fun while others were so scared they were shitt’n spaghetti strings for a week!!!

They say the cream always rises to the top… but shit floats just as well if you know what I’m say’n… and I had a lot of fun either way you wanna look at it!! Simple pleasures for simple minds I suppose…



Sailors and Taxi Drivers



An ol’ salty sailor is out on the town doing liberty drunk and leaving the casino… the same casino where two years earlier he’d had a terrible run in with a Taxi driver that cost him a stripe and thirty days restriction to the boat!

As he exits the casino, he sees a long line of Taxi drivers... and at the end is his old enemy from two years before!!

Seeing this, the ol’ salt decides to get his revenge. He goes up to the first Taxi and says…

"Hey will you give me a blowjob?"

The taxi driver says…

"No you freak, get out of my car!"

The drunken sailor then goes on to the next car and says…

"Hey will you give me a blowjob?"

The taxi driver says…

"No you maniac, get out of my car!"

The ol’ Salt continues to do this all the way down the line until he reaches the last taxi, and sees his enemy.

He climbs in and asks…

"How much for a ride to the airport?"

Not recognizing the sailor the driver replies…

"Five Dollars!"

"Okay."

…says the sailor and he gets in. Then as he passes the line of other taxis, he sticks his hands out the window and gives them all a big thumbs up!!!

'An AWOL Crackerjack'



I figure it’s that time of season when it happened so many years ago! I figure I’ll tell my whimsical rendition of feel’n sorry for my happy ass after accepting a taxpayer sustained college enticement to help fill the ranks of the Ol’ Canoe Club!! Then how I took some leave of Unauthorized Absence on a week long journey from Arctic brisk winds blow’n across Lake Michigan thumbing rides and catnapp’n on a Greyhound half way through hell and Georgia to the sunshine state!!   

Rest assured I made a fine mess of things in those first six months as a Crackerjack, learn’n a hard humbled lesson in swaller’n my pride while tap dancing on my own dick! No son-of-a-bitch was dumber and more ill-advised than I at such a young age!! I remember looking longingly at the world outside, contemplating what my existence would’ve been like had I not signed my life away on that dotted line!!!

I said it once before…

“At Nineteen and right outta High School we were all young… dumb… and full of too much sexual angst to be pull’n our puds for just one gal! But what the hell did we know… I fell in love and all I could think about was that ‘Suzie Rotten Crotch’ back home!”

At this juncture it was high time I took a serious stab at going AWOL!  I’d talked to the ol’ Chaplin but he could’nt help me… I consulted with my shipmates but they didn’t understand… so unencumbered and feel’n unobligated to stand my post, I took the next big experience in my Navy Career… in subzero weather with a seabag over my shoulder and a thumb up in the air I decided to go piss’n  in the wind!! Now at a meager five foot seven inches and less than a buck fifty soak and wet… that’s a mighty long journey for a young man not preferential to the cold… In the Chicago winter… hitchhiking is mightily tough...one can freeze his balls off in those conditions!!!

It was colder than a well-digger’s ass on a brass toilet seat in the Yukon and I had three or four layers over that ass and I still felt naked as a jail bird… yet it gave me an advantage...like having a super-secret code ring. The theory being,’Mr. and Mrs. Concerned Citizen’ would see me out there in the damned cold leaning helplessly into the wind…

“Oh we can't pass that cute little feller up....he's freez’n his butt off!”

Then all you had to do was struggle to reach the stopped car with an exaggerated chatter of the ol’ teeth and knees!!!

Somehow with that seabag over my shoulder and three or four piggy back rides from a few all American folks helping a young dumb sailor try to escape his own misery, I had made it from somewhere in Waukegan to somewhere downtown Chicago! With no clue what was where or if up was down… I think I was having a mental case of vertigo in that snow blizzard that was going on outside as well as inside my head!! I’d made it to the L-Train and tried to figure out how the hell to get to the Greyhound Station I knew was downtown!!!

Standing there lost and confused on the wrong side of town, some cute young black girl came over and pulled me aside…

“Honey… do you have any idea where you are or where you’re going?”

… All I knew was it was cold… somewhere in Chicago… and trying to get to the bus station! She grasped me by the arm and told me I was in a bad neighborhood with no business being there and she rode the train with me to the Greyhound terminal… you can’t find that kind’a sweetness just anywhere… not these days!!!

Once at the station I gave most of my wallet for a one way trip to Tampa… the closest stop to home at the time and looked for a place to plant my ass and rub my hands together for a little warmth! The place was pretty antiquated… looked like somewhere out of an old Hitchcock Thriller… old furniture with torn upholstery and shitty bathrooms with lights flickering overhead!! Cold, nervous & hungry… I had an unopened box of peanut M&Ms in my pocket I’d bought from the gedunk machine before I’d left!! I remember because I wrote ‘Suzie Rotten Crotch’s’ number on it so I could call her when I got back home!!!

… And so half way through hell and Georgia to the sunshine state I made it in about three days! It was a careless adventure of feel’n free without constraint!! No musters, no commitments, no early morning marches to the chow hall!! Just a testosterone loaded kid full of bullshit and emotions and a few dollars in my hip pocket!! Needless to say shit went downhill pretty fast for a fresh young lad who’d lost his way!!!

Once I made it into town I’d hooked up with my ol’ pal Joey and some Mad Dog 20/20 for some hell rais’n and hard drink’n before I found myself tankered and serenading silly love songs at ‘Suzie Rotten Crotch’s’ window 0100 hours in the morning… on a school night (she was still in high school) … don’t know why her daddy didn’t pull out the ol’ twelve gauge shotgun full of rock salt… quite the contrary as he invited me in… and I proceeded to thank him by turning his toilet and bathroom floor into a funny shade of purple!! All I remember next was waking up in an orange grove the ensuing morning in Joey’s car bent over the passenger seat with a bucket draped over my head about a quarter full of last night’s drink!!!

… That my friends is a ‘No Shitter’…

After three days of argument’s sake… a dozen phone calls from shipmates, Chief of the barracks, and my command in Great Mistakes, I was on an airplane back to NTC where I was to be awarded my punishment for my deeds as a young shitbag recruit!!! 

Our Commanding Officer, Commander Clark, was a hard ass to say the least! A no nonsense kind of fella…

“So what’s your story son?”

“I was homesick sir… and missed my girlfriend so I just left!”

“Are you over it yet?”

“No Sir… not really!”

“Well son… If you ever get finished convalescing from your illness of self-pity then I promise… shit will get better!”

The skipper didn’t consider my rather unorthodox self-loathing as any more than a cry for help and hemmed my ass up at Captain's Mast for two weeks restriction... and some session time with the Alcohol Anonymous meetings at the base chapel! Now listening to those fellas tell tales of their childhood… rape, incest, abuse… hell, that’s when I realized I was nothing more than a snot nosed spoiled brat kid!! I had no gauddamned reason to bitch or feel sorry for myself… that shit makes you wake up quick when you see how bad it is in the real world!!!

Instead of kicking my dumb ass to the curb they gave me another opportunity to get an Honorable Discharge entitling me to a free funeral plot and some VA benefits down the road when I’m an old coot wearing depends and fitt’n tennis balls to the bottom of a walker! Yet somehow I was even dumb enough to get suckered into three more enlistments and several trips around the world before calling it a day and hang’n up my anchors to be a born-again landlubber!!!

… You know, they say you could’nt of made Chief unless you’d been to Mast at least once in your career… and all the lifers became ‘Mustangs’… he-he!!!

Yeah, I walked in and out of the door of life a few times and it hit me square where the ‘Good Lord’ split me… it’s funny how the mind expunges all the bullshit in between… ain’t it?!?

 

Happy '2014' New Year!

Hidden Treasure



With expressed permission… I bring to you a funny story written by Dino Myers from USS Buchanan DDG14 between 1971-75…  With observations by Dino’s Ops Boss, John Howard, LTjg, 1972-74… and Rebuttal by Dino!!!

BUCHANAN at the end of the 72’ cruise was one of six destroyers that were designated Mod Squad ships. Mod Squad - for those not familiar with the term - was one of Admiral Zumwalt’s programs rewarding deserving officers with commands normally given to officers of the next higher rank… Case in Point, the Commanding Officer of a destroyer is normally a Commander, but in the Mod Squad, a Lieutenant Commander was given command. The failure of the concept is the subject of another story. At this point, late 73’ we had been Mod Squad for over a year, and by then we were already on our second CO.

“Not only was the CO one rank junior, the XO and the Department Heads were one rank junior too. And with the Department Heads being LTjgs the Division Officers had to be Ensigns or junior Jgs... That’s how I came to be the Ops Boss as a LTjg and end up with ET's like Dino working for me. I’m looking forward to the reasons why the Mod Squad concept was a failure, Dino. We were on our second LCDR CO because the first… LCDR John Dalrymple, was relieved for cause when the ship got a pretty bad report from the Board of Inspection and Survey (INSURV). Oddly enough, Dalrymple went on to make Admiral and Roche (the guy who replaced him) retired as a Captain and just finished four years as Secretary of the Air Force.” 

The command had made the decision that the reason we had been unable to pass the last FIT REP was because very important warfare things had been overlooked!! Things like cleaning, painting, replacing linoleum in passageways, insuring the Bosn’s Pipe call was played before every 1MC announcement when at sea!!!

“He-he-he… And not being able to get underway without jury-rigging just about every piece of equipment in the entire engineering plant!”

I had been aboard for two years when LCDR Roche took command in June of 73.’ During those two years, I could count the number of times I heard the Bosn’s Pipe onboard on one hand and have fingers left over. And just as important, that all the windshield wipers on the bridge pointed in the same direction …  all to Port or all to Starboard.

“What the heck were you doing on the bridge, Dino? You must have been fixing one of the SPA-25 radar repeaters?!?”

“Actually I had forgotten the windshield wiper tidbit until Jim Roche brought it up at first reunion.” 

“I wonder why Dino didn’t like the pipe… Maybe his rack was right under a 1MC speaker? Or did the pipe wake him from his naps in the Radar Room?”

“I just thought it shouldn’t be played in the enlisted berthing like it was not played in Officers Country. My naps in Radar were at my own risk!”

To assist with resolving some of these problems, Thursday of each week was designated for Captain’s Inspection. This consisted of all hands being reclassified as janitors for a day. In the morning, all passageways and spaces were secured so they could be cleaned. The only spaces accessible were those that had access via weather decks. After lunch… inspection started each team with an officer to find dirt and a Yeoman to record the event! They left the Wardroom on their mission!! Captain Roche would go with a different team each week!!!

“Well, the inspection was really called a Zone Inspection, and they weren’t weekly, they were monthly as I recall. And the purpose was not just to make sure the spaces were clean, but more importantly to make sure all the DC equipment worked and that any problems – of any sort – were recorded so that they could get prioritized to get fixed. We spent a lot of SurfPac’s maintenance dollars during the months after Roche took command.”

“I stand corrected. That was the original definition of inspections. Maybe was once a month but sure seemed like every week.” 

One Thursday a young Ensign asked to look inside a locked cabinet in Radar. This cabinet contained the extra parts all ETs kept outside the supply system – parts like vacuum tubes, transistors, and fuses. There had been some concern by Captain Roche about hoarding unauthorized spare parts- wanting it stopped and all parts returned to stock. I did what any Second Class would do when a green Ensign asked dumb questions... I explained that it contained the manuals for equipment and they were kept locked up because they were classified. This confused the Ensign because he knew he did not have the ‘need to know’ so he wasn’t sure if he could make me open the cabinet. Being unsure how to proceed, he did not press the issue.

“Pretty quick thinking, Dino! The Ensign in question must have been the Disbursing Officer.”

“Good guess can't slip one by you.”

The following week Captain Roche happened to accompany the inspection team that was to do the Radar Rooms. I never knew if this was just their time in the rotation, or if the events of the previous week had anything do with it. Well, whatever it was, the inspections had started and we were waiting to present the spaces when a panicky young Third Class ran into Radar and insisted I follow him to Aux Radio and see something that appeared to him to signal the end of the world. In the space was a ship’s entertainment speaker box about 18 inches square and 6 inches deep, mounted on the bulkhead just above shoulder height.

“Probably just the luck of the rotation – but you’ll never know for sure...”

He had gotten bored while waiting for the inspection party and opened the box – only to discover a half-full fifth of Scotch in the speaker! It only took me a quick second to figure who the Scotch belonged to… based on location and brand. This individual had been discharged and flown home from Subic Bay over a year and a half earlier. The bottle had been fermenting there ever since with no one knowing of its existence. I figured that running through the passageways with a bottle of Scotch with Officers… Chiefs…  and the Master-at-Arms patrolling everywhere was a bad idea! Besides… who would ever believe my explanation???

“Boy, ain’t that the truth… I know I would have had a hard time choking down that story!!!”

The only thing that made sense was to close the box and go through the inspection as normal. I would dispose of it later. After all it had already been there for over a year with no one the wiser…

“Good thinking!!”

Radar was the first space inspected. All went well but as the Captain was just about to leave, he stopped at the locked cabinet. Then he looked at me with a smirk as if to say he knew what was inside but there were certain things officers should not ask… also to remind me not to blow too much smoke up the young Ensign’s ass. I smiled back so he understood that I had gotten the message with the knowledge that the spare parts inventory was safely hidden in the SPS 37 power supply. The cabinet now contained manuals as I had described to the Ensign the week before.

Next was Aux Radio... I was concerned the Third Class would prostrate himself over the speaker box screaming…  

"There ain’t nothing in here that shouldn’t be in here!!!"

… so I stepped over to ‘supervise.’ I don’t know what brought the Captain’s attention to the speaker box (maybe I wasn’t as cool as I thought… or maybe the Third Class was staring at it with sweat on his forehead… or maybe it was just dumb luck). The Captain asked what a ship’s entertainment speaker was doing in a working space, so I explained that during the last cruise this space was used by our DJ to transmit from, and there was no longer a speaker in the box. This seemed to satisfy the Captain’s curiosity, and my blood pressure started to return to normal as the Skipper turned away.

“I’m laughing pretty hard right now – I can see the scene as plain as day!”

But then the Ensign reached up and pushed on the speaker screen. There were no screws in the top of screen and it caved in, hitting the bottle which then started to wobble. My ear was only inches from the side of said box so it sounded like a freight train to me! The space was small and with the Captain, Ensign, Yeoman, Third Class and myself… there was no room to spare. The Captain had turned his back so I slid between the speaker box and the Ensign, and glared down at him. After all, what good does being big and ugly do if you don’t use it? This move sent the Ensign to the Skipper’s side for protection, and we got through inspection without disturbing the Scotch anymore!

“Who was the Yeoman? Was it YN1 Leech… or maybe PN1 Bob Bussey? If it was Bob, he was probably in on the whole thing from the git-go!”

“I don't remember who it was but figured if one more guy came in the space we’d have to wear condoms to prevent some nasty disease! “

At liberty call that day the bottle of Scotch left with me and was used to celebrate the fact that I had somehow managed to finish the same rank that I started with that morning!!

“Simply amazing!’

‘Cherry Boy’

I'll probably get tarred, feathered and even keelhauled over this...... but in the days before the powers that be took hold of the mold and broke it to pieces, most of the fun loving ol’ canoe club was all about a girl in every port, while drunk and disorderly and other unseemly behavior searching for a pack of smokes and an easy street walk’n courtesan for some hasty gauddamned horizontal refreshment!!!

In particular there was a place… a place called Subic in the PI! A place where stories were made of pure bullshit and some not so much!! I think this is where the term ‘This ain’t no bullshit’ was coined!! When you hear these yarns you’d probably think to yourself…

There ain’t a kernel of fact in that there story… ain’t no way no how!”

You’re probably think’n…

“How profane… no one could have that many adventures and capers from one port visit!"

But I’m here to tell you… if it can happen… it’s happened in the PI! So many Crackerjacks left the brow with no intention of heeding warnings from their Sea Daddies!! After many a story heard by this young Crackerjack of this place… the personal Nirvana of so many who’d traveled it’s way… and after three months of nothing short of Penthouse, Hustler, & Playboy Magazines in a dark rack in the back of some berthing compartment… my perverted mind was like an ol’ metal bear trap rusted shut!! I couldn’t think of nothing but tits & tight asses… and I was look’n for a warm body to saddle up ol’ Rusty!!!

Besides… they say you never forget your first time… and this was my first time in the PI. I was a Cherry Boy and my shippies made sure I knew that from the get go!!!

"Don’t fall in love out their Swinger… she’ll say she love you long time no shit! But don’t fall for it!"

Yeah, I got the message… I knew it was all a game and these gals were looking for a husband to take them to America! I wasn’t gonna fall for that crap!! I just had to remember… as soon as the barfine was paid I was just a customer… just a number… I’m gett’n serviced, and that’s just find… ‘cause I was hornier than a three peckered billy goat!!!

Then came ‘Knock Off Ships Work’ as we scrambled to the berthing douching our armpits & dousing down with the latest cheap cologne ready to hit the streets of Olongapo! Once across Shit River it was out in town where I had ideas of sailors riding rickshaws with knockout local ‘Love Me Long Time’ girls!! But it was nothing of the sorts!!!

Yes… Once across Shit River Magsaysay, downtown Olongapo was an eye opening exotic bazaar of forbidden pleasure and amazing delights!  There were sin dens & beer joints of the like with names such as Top Gun, California Club, Sierra Club, The Wagon Wheel… etc,etc!!  These were great places to lose your money while drink’n stuff you had no idea what it was or where it came from… and the girls… the bargirls were many… sooo many girls!! I must’a had one of them ‘Gone to Heaven… Cherry Boy’ looks on my face ‘cause all the gals seemed to know it… it was not secret!!!

But I wasn’t looking for one of them manipulative type bargirls! Yes… I was jumpy as a fart on a griddle and definitely ready to patronize some tantalizing bar booty… while three sheets to the wind without having to explain myself at confession or to a psychiatrist!!

Soooo there we were walking down Magsaysay… decorated Jeepneys haul’n cargoes of enlisted wildlife with seats made of five gallon buckets making numerous runs from the gates of Shit River all the way through Barrio Barretto to Subic City! There were pick pocketeers… street vendors… & lady street walkers!! But most of those gals were hands off… a risky proposition probably kicked out of the bar for STDs or scamming the patrons!! Either way… they were the ones to stay away from!!!

We stopped in our first bar and washed down the ol’ thirsties with a cold San Migoo and my ass parked on an old wooden barstool with the names of every vessel in the ol’ canoe club wittled deep in its grain!  All the waitresses & dancers were purttier than a picture as the employment requirements must have included the collective breast displacement of a large destroyer...  most Filipinas aren’t known for their bra size but those lovely sweethearts must’ve been load’n up on the ‘Chuckwagon’!! A couple of beauties sat down next to us and within seconds they were laugh’n and carrying on!! It didn’t take long for my shipmate, Becker, to tell the girls I was a ‘Cherry boy!!’ They brought a young gal over they’d claimed was a ‘Cherry Girl’ as Becker continued to flip me shit about being a Cherry Boy…

“Hey Cherry Boy, get me a beer!”  

…but a younger innocent type was probably the best I could hope for! She had that sweet, virtuous look and I was immediately attracted… thinking back now, it seems strange to come all this way to get all goo goo eyed over some gal in the Phillipines… but I had to remember she was a bargirl and nothing more! I’m just here to get laid!! Becker says to me…

“Swinger check out the turd chopper on her… she’s got some big titties too!”

… Bigger than your average Filipina’s! With my mouth a drool’…  I had no idea how to play this game and I was still in awe from the jungle I just walked into!!  I asked her to join me and she seemed a bit shy but she was surely interested!!!

This particular cherry girl was as cute as a button. She was tense and I couldn’t help wondering why she was in the bar at all! But once again I had to remember… I wasn’t here looking for my future ex-wife!! As we became acquainted she said she’d only been working about a month… a rooky in the business… all this was making me anxious & horny and I was ready to head out…

Once I paid her bar fine we headed down the road for a hotel, I was like a fish out of water… patronizing ladies providing commercial carnal delight wasn’t something I was used too… never done it up to this point so I was nervous as a Christmas Turkey to say the least!!!

We came up upon one of them pay by the hour hotels… small and about three stories high! Inside it had this colonial ambiance… there were ceiling fans with wicker furniture and large wooden blinds across the barred windows in the lobby. Once in the room on the top floor there was a large bed taking up most of the floor space with fake ferns at each corner and a corrugated roof overhang you could see through the screened window.  Hell… it sure wasn’t a five star room at the Waldorf Astoria with Kate Upton but I wasn’t complaining!!!

Dropping her panties she was quite the looker… as she was built like a brick shit house with the greatest knockers… the kind that don’t head for the armpits when she’s lay’n down if you know what I mean! Her every curve… just right… neither too lean… nor too plump!! Nubile comes to mind… the perfect ripeness of a woman before she starts to sag!!!

We kissed for a while and I got hotter & hotter! We took a shower together as I held her honey colored frame close as the water splattered around our humid bodies!! Then we went back to the bed stark ass naked and kissed some more before doing the some vaginal bungee jump’n while giving the monkey a banana… park’n the pink bus in the furry garage.. and hiding the salami while schuck’n the bearded oyster!!!

“I will do anyting you want… anyting!”

Yeah… I buttered her muffin for quite a time but for some reason I just couldn’t let loose of the man chowder! She was tighter than a gnats ass stretched over a rain barrel but I figured maybe it was the heat… or too much San Migoo… or maybe it was just the situation… I wasn’t sure!!!

Then she wanted me to Yodel in her Crevice… now there’s not too many things that I won’t do but muff diving a ‘love you long time no shit’ bar girl?!?

“Honey I’ll do anything but carpet munch’n… after all I don’t know who’s been burying their bone in that carpet!”

Now don’t get me wrong… I gave it a quick thought  and considering she was young and claimed to still be ‘Cherry’ it was a hard bargain to pass up as she insisted she was clean… but I wasn’t about to get the ol’ hypoderm the size of a yarning needle stuck in my tonsils for having a nasty case of yuck in the throat!! But we found other ways to make the time well worth it and eventually I was spitt’n out the man gravy!!!

Yes… I had a newly found swagger, as I’d lost my ‘Cherry Boy’ status! I was no longer in the dilemma of enduring that ‘Cherry Boy’ brand!! It was a surprising and happy moment all at the same time!!!

Sooo whatever happened to the young ‘Cherry Girl’ who helped me establish my veteran status amongst the animals of Olongapo you ask?!? I never went back to her… can’t say I figure why… other than I wasn’t look’n for love but a lotta passion fruit if you catch my drift! As many and as much as I could get in such a short amount of time!! I’m wiser and older now… and often wonder if I’d made her my honeykoe… whatever would’a happened?!? I ran into her on the street about two weeks later… we had a moment of eye contact… neither of us spoke a word… and we both carried on our own way!! But I often wondered as she was the better of all those butterfly kisses…

There were a lot of good recollections… good people in the PI along Magsaysay and all the way to Subic City… a collection of unforgettable memories!  Memories, sights and smells that became very familiar to the lads who roamed those very streets!! I have a feeling the way we experienced that place will never be relived… with a bulge in our pockets… eat’n the monkey meat & balut and wash’n it down with the ol’ San Migoo!!!

Is it too late to be forgiven for my iniquitous sins and steered in the pathway of righteousness? Can you imagine what a pissed off hooker could do whittling into the table of some humid happy bar in the south pacific? I need to get a signed chit from Saint Peter asking the great Creator not to hurt me too severely come judgement day... ‘cause I was a lustfully bad, bad boy when I was a young lad wear’n the ol’ Crackerjack uniform!!!