My Heart’s at Sea Forever

By: An Unknown Sailor

Long ago I was a Sailor.
I sailed the Ocean blue.
I knew the bars in Singapore…
The coastline of Peru.

I knew well the sting of salt spray,
The taste of Spanish wine,
The beauty of the Orient…
Yes, all these things were mine.

But I wear a different hat now,
Jeans and T-shirts too.
My sailing days were long ago…
With that life I am through.

But somewhere deep inside of me…
The sailor lives there still.
He longs to go to sea again,
But knows he never will…

My love, my life, is here at home,
And I will leave here never.
Though mind and body stay ashore…
My heart’s at sea forever.

Simulation for Airdales

Robert “Okie Bob” Layton

Garland Davis

Go to the dog pound and adopt the mangiest, broke eared, crippled old dog that you can find.  Name the mutt Chief.  Teach him to drink coffee and lay around his dog house in the backyard.  Stencil CPO Mess, Knock Before Entering on the front of the dog house.   The only trick to teach him is to stand and sit at attention.

Go to the nearest junkyard and buy a 1956 Oldsmobile Super 88 (The Olds will simulate an F-8 Crusader).  Build an extra garage adjacent to your bedroom to house the F-8.  Chew your youngest kid out for failing to chock and tie down the F-8 properly.

Have your father-in-law (Squadron Maintenance Officer) set 20 unachievable goals on Monday morning with the promise that if they are achieved there will be liberty for the whole family on Sunday.  Have the whole family work 18 hour days for the entire week while your father-in-law goes golfing.  Achieve all the goals. Upon his return Saturday night have him announce one of the following on a rotating basis, Due to operational commitments: (1)The duty section (1/3 of the family) will have to work Sunday, or (2) Liberty is canceled.

Spend all your waking hours working on the bird.  Have the rest of your family work on the plane during the hours you are trying to sleep.  At 0800 and 1800, everyday require your family members to muster with their tool boxes and inventory the contents. Make sure all tool inventories are logged as required by regulation.

Hold all sign offs on your plane until you get a successful engine turn.  Spend all night looking up repair parts for your aircraft in the supply catalogs (J.C. Whitney catalog) and fill out requisitions for submission to your wife.  After explaining to her why you need each part, submit the requisitions to the Aviation Storekeeper (Your middle daughter) for order.  Ensure that she places the wrong delivery address on the orders.  Make sure that UPS gives an erroneous delivery date for the parts.  When they finally arrive, make sure the AK misplaces them for at least a week.

In the meantime, have the Plane Captain (Oldest son) and his assistant (Youngest son) perform corrosion control measures on the aircraft. Grinding and painting, not more than an eighteen square inch area at a time.  As soon as they are finished, have them redo it with the new anti-radar reflecting paint.

Roust the neighbors out at least once a day to hold a FOD walk down of the neighborhood.  Afterward, have them re-spot all their cars.  Make sure all are chocked and chained properly.  Wash and wax all the cars on your block once a week in the rain to simulate washing aircraft.  Have a ten-year-old neighbor kid QA (Quality check) the work and tell you all the places you missed.

When you are ready to turn the engine on the F-8, pull the aircraft out of the hanger.  Schedule this evolution for 0300 (3 am).  Move a huffer (wife’s car with jumper cables) into place and position Mother in law’s car to act as a JBD (jet blast deflector).  (Change 1), put the mother in law in the JBD.  Hook up the huffer and fire up the plane.  Idle for thirty seconds and then do a thirty-second Burner Blast (Crank it up to 7000 RPM).  Make sure all involved are wearing hearing protection, an F-8 doesn’t have mufflers. Flames shoot from the tailpipe since there is no muffler, only a straight pipe and burn the JBD to a blackened tangle.  Have a school crossing guard dressed in a yellow sweatshirt run over and direct your family to shut down.  Have the family and neighbors perform an emergency Pull Forward.  (Change 2) Push JBD over the side (into neighbor’s yard).

Get into a fight with the wife, kids the neighbors, and the yellow shirt crossing guard.  Lose fight.  Push plane back into the hanger.  Jump on the wife and kids put them to grinding and painting as soon as they sweep down the hanger deck.

Go into the backyard.  Step into Chief’s expended fuel, knock on Chief’s house and whistle.  When he comes out, call him to “Attention.”  As the dog sits or stands at attention kick at him, stand over him with your finger pointed into his face and yell, “Chief, get those fucking airplanes up.”

Once the car (F-8) is operational, have three highly qualified people inspect the car before driving (preflight), then have a 16-year-old girl who just got her license and knows nothing about cars inspect it again. Have her drive car as if it were a rented Corvette with full coverage insurance (flight ops).  When she returns have her tell you everything her one month of vast experience tells her is wrong, using vague phrases.  Have three people inspect it (Post-flight/Daily inspection) and the next morning even though the car has not moved have three people re-inspect it and repeat twice a day.  Every third day replace the alternator before driving.  Every 7, 14, 28 and 56 days, take one section apart and reassemble and every 128 days take entire car apart and reassemble.

At this point reward your father in-law with a promotion and a medal for superior operational readiness.

Reliving a WestPac Cruise

Garland Davis

Preparing to leave home sit in your car and let it run for four hours before going anywhere. This is to ensure your engine is properly “lit off.” Before leaving your driveway or arriving or departing any other location, set the Special Sea Detail and make your kids stand on the hood of the car for an hour while you wait for your next-door neighbor to provide a line handling party.  Make sure your boat trailer with the Liberty Boat is attached to the car.

When driving in foggy or inclement weather set the Low Visibility Watch. Require your children to look out the back window and make reports on anything they see. Give your wife the lookout to Starboard and the dog to Port.

Carry on the underway routine while at home. Empty all trash receptacles and sweep down the entire house three times per day. Have your spouse set off the smoke alarm.  Grab a pair of headphones (without Walkman) and microphone (without cord), run into the kitchen and stand by the stove.  To no one, in particular, say “Stove manned and ready.”  Stand there for four hours doing nothing.  DO NOT sit down.  After four hours say “Stove secured,” once again to no one.  Return to your normal duties.

String lines (ropes) between your roof and your neighbor’s roof at 0500 (5 am) have all family members assemble on the roof wearing life jackets and hard hats.  Stand around until 0800).  Send everyone inside telling them it will be 2 hours until they will be needed and they should get breakfast. Wait until the first fork of food is in their mouth and call them back to the roof.  Transfer the contents of your neighbor’s garage to your garage using the lines strung from roof to roof.  Repeat every three days changing the times to randomly interrupt every meal. Every three days rig a hose between the garages and transfer the contents of the heating oil tanks between the houses.

Assemble the family in the front yard 0600 (6 am) each day.  Have the kids line up side by side to the full width of the yard.  Tell them you have hidden a gold nugget in the yard, and if they find it, they won’t have to line up in the yard for one day. Have mom walk behind them with a bag and collect whatever they find.  Have the kids walk slowly toward the other side of the field, heads down, no talking, picking up every piece of chewed gum, lint, or pebble and hand it to mom to put in her handbag.  Remind the children that there is a golden nugget so that they will be excited and look more intensely.  The purpose of this FOD walk down is to keep the lawn mower from sucking something into the blades and spitting it out the other side.

Install a 10-inch composite loop fire main system in your house.  Designate a closet in your house as a repair locker, equip it with firefighting gear.  Hold fire, smoke, and flooding drills every day. At least once a week at about 0230 (2:30 am) have your neighbor sneak into your house with a bell and a bullhorn.  Instruct him to get as close to you as possible without waking you then ring the bell and scream through the bullhorn “Fire! Fire! Fire! There is a Class Alpha Fire in the Galley!”   As soon as you peel yourself off the overhead, get half-dressed and run for the door, have him yell, “This is a drill!”

Secure the showers.  Put everyone on “water hours” and don’t permit anyone to bathe for five days.  Make your son stand midwatches on the water heater (evaps) for violating water hours and taking a hotel shower.

Enlist your son’s paintball team run through your dining room waving their paintball guns and shouting “Security Alert!” At this, you should drop to the deck. Security Alerts are best conducted when the deck is wet from scrubbing or at meal times.

Lock your keys in the house and wait three hours for the locksmith.  This simulates all the waiting in the chow line, the pay line, the ship’s store line, and for shots at sick bay.

Have your wife open a loaf of bread early in the day so it can dry out, take some bologna, salami, and cheese out of the wrappers and leave it in the reefer from supper to midnight.  Have her get up at 2330 (11:30 pm) and put it on the counter along with a pot of either cold or overly hot soup.  Also, have her heat up some canned apricots also.  Make sure she serves glasses of orange Bug Juice (Kool-Aid) with a single ice cube in each glass and the coffee that she has kept hot since breakfast. While she is doing this, have a couple of fresh baked apple pies cooling in the corner, so the aroma fills the kitchen.

Have the neighbor with the bullhorn and bell run through the house yelling “General Quarters, General Quarters, Man Your Battle Stations.” Button up your shirt to the neck; pull your socks up over your pant legs; put on a scuba mask and breath into a paper bag while trying to read your least favorite book. Do this for an unknown length of time.

(Carrier Operations) Have your neighbor stand across the street on the darkest of nights.  Give him a flashlight with a cone on the end so that he can signal you when the coast is clear of oncoming cars. When you’re halfway across, have him change the signal as a car is ten feet from you and blaring its horn.   Break into a sprint and trip over the curb as you try to find the darkest set of shadows to hide in. Assemble your neighbors on Super Bowl Sunday in the street with push brooms.  Turn on all the garden hoses available and use extra strength dish detergent to wash the street.  When half done, turn on the fire hydrants to the part you haven’t washed drenching everyone. Move all your neighbor’s cars in a seemingly random order 3-4 times a day. (aircraft re-spotting).   Ensure at least 10% are deemed hanger bay queens (aircraft that are used as a parts store for other squadron aircraft) and don’t bring them out of the garage for six months while removing 1-2 parts per day. At the end of six months give your kids three days to make them all perfect again. (Simulates preparing for Squadron Fly Off) Draw straws to see who must use them first.

Cover your garage with plate steel. Label the door ‘RADIO 1.’  Buy an old Cadillac. Take the tires off.  Hire a crane and have the operator lift the Caddy six feet and drop it on the roof of the garage every couple of minutes for two or three hours while you try to type inside the garage.  This simulates gunnery practice or shore bombardment simulation,

In winter stand outside your house in a light jacket, with a white hat that doesn’t keep in heat and a pair of latex gloves for 2000-2400 (8 pm to 12 pm) quarterdeck watch. Invite every person you’ve ever met to your house at 2330 (11:30 pm). Liberty expires at midnight (“Cinderella Liberty”).  Salute every person that gets near you and grant them “permission to come aboard.” Have your wife relieve the watch at 2345 (11:45) dressed in warm clothes. Go to the kitchen to find that the only thing left of midrats is a slice of hard bread, a slice of cheese melted to the plate, and a single apricot. Hit the rack to get a few hours’ sleep.  At 0200 (2 am) the neighbor arrives with his bell and bullhorn.

Liberty call.  Drive to the nearest lake and get your kids (Boat crew) to put your boat in the water.  The oldest kid is the Coxswain; the middle girl is the boat engineer and the smallest (dumbest) boy is the Bow hook. Have them fool around with the boat for at least two hours before you are ready to depart the pier.  Have them take you across the lake to a seafood restaurant and club.  You have an overnight, so you can catch the 0500 (5 am) liberty boat tomorrow morning.  Go into the club and drink about six beers during the first hour, then switch to Tequila shots. When your wife comes in as instructed, make a move on her.  Buy her a drink, pay her a “Bar Fine” and agree to a price for sex.  Pay her the amount she asked for and wait while she goes to the head before you leave.  Drink some more Tequila, wait, wait, drink some more, wait.  Finally, they announce the bar is closing.  Pay them an exorbitant amount for a pint of the worst bourbon they have and stumble to the pier where you drink it and pass out.  The boat crew finds you at 0445 (4:45 am) and manages to get you aboard.  Puke while riding the boat across the lake.  When you get to the Marina eat some stale crap out of the vending machine (Roach Coach), drink about a gallon of orange soda, all that’s left in the machine, and drive back to the house.

Spend all the next morning sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee and regaling your neighbor with tales of a great liberty and your sexual prowess.  Ask your wife what is for lunch and bitch about whatever she is cooking.

Replicating Life in the Navy

Garland Davis

Have steel siding installed on the exterior of your house and paint it haze gray” chip the paint off and repaint it every three months. Coasties use white paint.   Run all the piping and the wires inside your house on the outside of the walls. Install lifelines around all patios and porches. Don’t permit anyone to lean on the life lines.

Place metal barriers on the lower 18″ of every door in your house and add eight handles to every door.  Pump ten inches of nasty half sewage water into your basement.  Pump it out, clean up the mess and paint everything in the basement gray.  Repeat frequently for added realism.

On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday turn your water temperature up to 200 degrees, on Tuesday and Thursday set the temperature at 10 degrees. On Saturday and Sunday inform your family that they used too much water during the week and thus all showering is secured.  Add a fuel oil injection unit to the fresh water supply for the house.

Stack all beds on top of one another in the closet. Raise your bed to within six inches of the ceiling. Stow all your clothing and possessions in a 36″ x 18″ x 12″ locker. If anyone is sick and throwing up put them in the top bunk.

Give the keys to your house to your next-door neighbor. Instruct him enter your bedroom every morning at 0600 (6:00 am), and blow a whistle loud enough for Helen Keller to hear.  Instruct the neighbor to shout in an amplified megaphone six inches from your ear, “Reveille, reveille, all hands heave out and trice up. The smoking lamp is lit in all authorized spaces.”

Have your mother-in-law write down everything she is going to do the following day.  Assemble your family and stand in the back yard at 0600 (6 am) while your mother-in-law reads her “Plan of the Day” (POD) to you.  Stand around for 15-20 minutes and then have your uncle join the group read the same thing again.  Repeat this everyday expect Sunday, unless you are simulating “at sea” in which case you may opt to do it seven days a week.

Eat the raunchiest Mexican food you can find for three days straight, then lock the bathroom door for 12 hours.  Hang a sign on the door that reads, “Secured – Contact OA Div at X-3053.”

When you leave your house, make sure to take the phone off the hook so it will be busy all day. Observe the shipboard multi telephone line rule.  One line is always reserved for the use of your father-in-law, one line reserved for your mother-in-law, and the third line is reserved for official business.  If you want to make a personal call, walk two blocks to a convenience store and wait in line at the pay phone. [Thank God for cell phones]

Install a bell on the front porch.  Whenever your father-in-law comes over ring the bell 4 times and announce his arrival/departure over a megaphone. Every time you leave or enter the house salute the porch light and ask your dog for permission to leave or enter the dwelling.

At random intervals from 1000 to 2200 (10 A.M. to 10 P.M.), have a biker gang with sledgehammers pound on your roof to simulate the launching and recovery of aircraft. At night, after the family has gone to sleep, have the bikers drag chains and heavy equipment across the roof to simulate the ‘re-spotting’ of the aircraft for the next morning’s flight schedule.

Install flashlights (battle lanterns) at the precise height at which to bang your head in the dark. Point the flashlight and important items (such as the sofa, all doorways, stove, etc).   Occasionally turn the electric power off at the mains and run around the house turning on all the flashlights.

Use an air-raid siren for an alarm clock.  Remove all wrist watches from the family.  Use the dinner bell as a systematic time indicator. Ring it madly when everybody is  their hungriest and announce the “Chow-line is now open for an hour.”  Do not drool when you hear bells.

Divide bathroom shower with three partitions. Remove shower nozzle and replace with kitchen sink dish sprayer hooked to the cold water line only. The “extra” two showers now represent actual percentage of operable showers. Remove bathroom sink, mirror, and all shelves. Replace with water fountains for shaving and hygiene use.

Do Laundry using only the rinse cycle with paint thinner for detergent. Dry for 10 minutes and randomly redistribute.

Have an electrician certify as ‘safe’ and hang a tag on every electrical appliance you own, no matter if the appliance is brand new or if its own manufacturer claims it is up to safety standards.

Buy a two-year calendar. Carefully mark your EAOS (End of Active Obligated Service) day two years out, and number the days back to the present date for a long countdown.  Mark each day off for two years, dreaming of the “get out day.”  Then march down to personnel and ship over (reenlist for additional six years’ service).

Place fire extinguishers on the bulkheads (walls) of your home at elbow level next to the door openings to conveniently rip your shirt.

Stand in your living room with all the lights turned out, except for one red light by which you read a small print book.  On the hottest day of the year, have your local mechanic inspect all the fans and air conditioners per the “MIM” (maintenance instruction manual) for resistance to ground.  When he finishes, have him announce, “They failed the ‘xyz’ and ‘opq’ tests. I’m required to cut off all the plugs.”

Place your home on large hydraulic jacks. At random intervals, kill the lights and have the jacks move your home back and forth at unexpected intervals and angles. (Simulates dropping the load {loss of power} in 20-foot seas).

Gather the family and drive to McDonald’s. Park twelve blocks away, line up and slowly walk toward the front entrance moaning and griping each step of the way. Reach the door at closing time and have the manager yell, “Chow is secured.”

Invite 60 street people with bad habits to room with you for six months at a time.   Take the worst three and live with you in the closet in three level bunk beds. Four hours after you get into bed have your spouse shine a flashlight in your eyes and mumble, “Sorry, wrong rack!”

Move out of your home for six months leaving your wife with three children and dog for a tour of solo parenting.  Return and immediately begin to tell your spouse how to run the house and raise kids.  Warning – this usually results in a revised rank structure and job descriptions for the home.

Have everyone in your family hang two pillow cases next to their bed with large clothes pins and mark them “white” and “blue” for their dirty clothes. On laundry day put the pillow cases into two separate trash bags and designate a junior family member to drag them to the laundry room.

Cover a copy of UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice) with plastic.  Screw it into the wall (bulkhead) next to the toilet for handy reading.

Place a large floor fan next to your bed and run full speed to simulate shipboard ventilation.  If the fan goes off sit up in bed and yell, “We lost the load.”

Ten Signs That You Are a Sailor

By Garland Davis

1. Walking fast. You might be doing a great job of blending into your civilian surroundings, but your walk is always going to give you away. Sailors walk with a purpose as if their trip to the grocery store is a CNO press briefing.
2. Hair. Broke your habit of getting a high and tight? Good for you. But that leaves you two options: the fade and the classic “Officer or Pilot hair.” Yes, we see you pushing the edges of the “three inches on the top” rule as prescribed in Naval Regulation 2201.1.a.
3. Eating fast. Habits are hard to kick. And rarely in the Navy did you ever have ample time to appreciate your food even if you could.
4. The power stance. Chief Petty Officers and Officers are easy to spot: Just look for the person attempting to own the room with the “crossed arms and not leaning against anything” stance.
5. Jargon. Just try not to say “Roger that,” “Aye, Aye,” or “negative” in conversations. Just try. Eventually, your language will out you.
6. Walking. There is no way that a group of Sailors can take a casual stroll down a sidewalk without eventually falling into step. Even if you try not to, you will.
7. Sunglasses. Congratulations, you’re not wearing Oakleys or G.I. frames. Well done. But you’re still wearing sunglasses all the time, even when it is cloudy out.
8. Absurd politeness. You can easily pick out Sailors by their over usage of “sir” and “ma’am.” It is a credit to the Navy’s discipline that a cashier at Piggly-Wiggly receives the same clipped tones and politeness That a Three Star Admiral would.
9. Scanning crowds. Go to a department store, a mall or a party, and you’re bound to see that one person who is constantly scanning. Standing usually somewhere where they can see the whole room. And may God help the person acting suspicious because the Navy promotes being confrontational.
10. Sleeping anywhere. Sailors can sleep approximately anywhere, in any weather, on anything. They also come out of it rapidly and coherently.
11. You can’t converse worth a shit without using words Mom told you not to say.

More on Snipes

Garland Davis

Found the following on the internet:

In Medieval days up till the early 1800’s, there were no engines and no Snipes. Along about 1812 the Navy obtained their first paddle wheel steamer named the USS Fulton. To run the boiler and engine, men of steam were also acquired. They were not sailors but engineers from early land-based steam engines.

From the beginning, the sailors did not like or appreciate these landsmen and their foul, smokey plants. They were treated with contempt and pretty much given the short end of the stick.

In spite of all this the steam engine prevailed. There were still two crews, however. The Engineers and the Deck crew. Soon an Engineer Officer was appointed to each ship. He was the Engineer Master, and all the Engineers reported to him. The Deck sailors reported to the ship’s master. Curiously, the two masters were on equal footing and neither was over the other. The Deck Master though was in the best position. He controlled the quarters and rations. The Engineers were still at the mercy of the deck gang. By the height of the civil war, as steam was taking over and sails were disappearing the old Admirals that controlled the Navy were in a quandary what to do about the situation.

They accomplished a couple of things. First, they managed to make the Senior Master a Captain. As Captain, he was in overall command of the ship and the Engineering officer reported to him. Beings as how there were occasions that the Engineer Master outranked the ships master something had to be done to keep the Engineer from becoming “Captain.” To solve this problem, they developed two separate Officer branches. Staff and Line. Only Line Officers could succeed to command. Staff Officers would always be subservient to Line Officers at sea. Staff Officers consisted of Surgeons, Supply and yes, Engineering officers. To this day that is still true. The second change was to make all engineers Navy men; however, they were also made junior to all deck sailors. A petty officer machinist was junior to a deck seaman third. All this went to make the life of the engineers even more miserable. They could now be flogged and harassed at will by the Deck crew.

Along about this time came an Engineer Officer by the name of John Snipes. I cannot find the name of the ship he first appeared on, but he was a different cut from the others. Snipes demanded sleeping accommodations, and food equal to the Deck Gang. He also declared that there would be no more harassment for his engineers. When the ship’s Captain laughed at him, Snipes simply had his men put out the fires in the boiler. To make a long story short, Snipes brought about the changes in the system. In time these changes extended to the entire Naval fleet. The Engineers became strictly “hands off” for the Deck Gang. They became known as Snipe’s men and over the years as just Snipes.

NOTE:  I cannot verify if the above is true.  I have tried to find information on John Snipes.  I learned that there is a fiddle player by that name.  I found the above reprinted a number of times.  I prefer to think there is some truth to the tale. The following paragraphs are excerpted from a lengthy article by Lt Jim Stavridis published in January 1981 U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings. The entire article can be found here: http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1981-01/leadership-forum-leading-snipes.  END NOTE

It is a different world there, seven decks down, a world where the temperatures routinely soar over the 130° mark, where a watchstander can trace his rounds in his own sweat on greasy deck plates. The fireroom and engine room are the universe set aflame, a burlesque vision of fire and heat and noise and swift, dark machines that whine and turn and spin throughout the long at-sea periods. Many of the ships are more than 20 years old—merely replacing parts to some of the original equipment can require having to deal with defunct companies and retired technical representatives. The combined deficiency lists would take years to correct, if all the ship did was remain lashed to the pier with full shipyard support. The manning is wretchedly low, with watchstanders often on 6-on/6-off shift work, in a place where all the vitality and energy are drained from a man within the first hour in the space because of the heat and noise. Retention is low—with machinist’s mates and boiler technicians (BT’s) the most critical of ratings.

Someone has to lead them. And in every plant, on both coasts, there are some officers who can lead a snipe and others who cannot. For some engineer officers, the men in the holes are willing to work 16-, 18-, to 20-hour days, going port and starboard on duty days to prepare for an operational propulsion plant exam (OPPE).

Other engineers cannot light off a plant without a virtual strike. Certain ships, with good, snipe-capable officers, can make commitments, win “E”s, steam the plant, tour the VIPs, and all the rest. Others struggle to turn a shaft, draw a vacuum, or line up a low-pressure drain tank. The key is snipe leadership or the presence in the engineering department of what could be called snipe-capable officers.

There are several key attributes that the snipe-capable officer possesses. The first is some training in the technical areas. This does not necessarily mean he must be a mechanical engineer. The officer might have been an English or a psychology major—but he must at least have taken some math and engineering science, have some understanding of propulsion, and maybe even have an awareness of thermodynamics and electrical engineering. He should know what a spanner wrench and a tap and die set are, and perhaps even have used them at some time. He ought to have some idea of what a working man is capable of doing in what length of time. These are all attributes that come with the basic background training package. An officer who does not have any of these essential background items should not be ordered into a snipe-capable officer’s billet.

The second key asset for the snipe-capable officer is that he be able to obtain the respect of his men.  Coupled with the technical knowledge, there should be a tough, pragmatic approach to life. Being able to mix well with the enlisted men from a bantering, give-and-take conversational standpoint to being able to throw the football around with them at the division party all count in gaining respect. Snipes, generally, are physical, and the men they find easiest to respect and, thus follow, mirror these qualities.

Training in the plant to which he is detailed is a third background item that can make an officer more snipe-capable. The ability to walk into a plant and have a conversation about the locations of the equipment, their Outputs and parameters, and the idiosyncrasies of the plant is important. This coupled with the ability to ask any question without feeling or appearing stupid, but in a natural, curious way, can take an officer a long way into the ranks of the snipe-capable.

Halloween

By: Garland Davis

My neighbors are putting up Halloween decorations and all the stores stocking great displays of tooth rotting candy to placate the little goblins bring back memories of a couple of Halloweens where I grew up in Western North Carolina.  Halloween in the country in the fifties was a little different.

The road I lived on was dirt and gravel until 1958.  It was about a mile and a half long and ran from NC 411 to NC 66.  There was a total of eight occupied houses, one antebellum log house without a roof, various stock barns and two tobacco curing barns along its length.  If a kid were of a mind to go Trick or Treating all he would get was an apple at the Vanhoy sister’s house.  Everybody had apple trees.  We were burned out on apples by the time Halloween came around.

Besides, being pre-television farm country, most people went to bed at sunset and were up and had the cows milked by sunrise.  Just about everyone had a pack of free range dogs who would raise hell if one put a foot on their property.  Most dogs would just raise a ruckus, but some folks had dogs that would bite.  Which brings to mind my grandmother’s Blue Tick Hound, appropriately named Blue. Blue would bite anyone except my grandmother.  She would baby talk to him, and he would wag his tail and act like a little puppy.  My uncle used to say that Blue was “so God Damned mean that he was afraid to go to sleep.  He feared might wake up and bite himself.”

My grandmother lived in a three room house. One room was originally a log cabin (BTW it is still standing) built in 1825.  Two other frame rooms had been added.  The kitchen was on one end and the log cabin room on the other end.  Each room had a front and back door.  Blue was usually on the porch in front of the door of the room containing my grandmother.  When my grandmother went to work at the hosiery mill, Blue would sleep in the driveway. My uncle Frank had just gotten his first car and came home one afternoon while Blue was napping in the drive.  He blew the horn and yelled for Blue to move.  Blue just looked at him and went back to sleep. He jumped out of the car and yelled, “Blue, you son of a bitch, I’m gonna kick the shit out of you.”

Blue had a different idea.  He came up off the ground with a growl and grabbed a pants leg in his mouth and ripped it half off.  Frank in fear of his life, scrambled for the car, dropping his keys as he did so.  Blue went back to his bed and went back to sleep.  Every time Frank tried to get out to get his keys, Blue would jump up and growl.  He spent the entire afternoon in his car waiting for my grandmother to come home.

The only people on my street that didn’t have dogs were the Vanhoy sisters and Mr. McCandless.  Mr. McCandless lived in the first house off 411.  He farmed a little but primarily raised ducks which he sold to a butcher in town.  He refused to keep any dogs because he was afraid they would kill the ducks or suck the eggs. Mr. McCandless was a crotchety old fellow whom we used to torment.  In the spring and fall, we would walk to school instead of take the bus.  Mr. McCandless would be on his porch reading his paper.  We would stop out of his sight and pass his house one at a time.

The first boy would say, “Good morning Mr. McCandless.”

He would look over his paper and reply, “Good morning boy.”

A couple of minutes later a second boy would pass, “Good morning Mr. McCandless.”

He would lower the paper a little more forcefully and say, “Good morning” In a gruff tone.

And so on with a third and fourth boy and each reply to the “Good morning” getting gruffer and louder.  About the time the fifth boy offered him a good morning, he would jump up, stomp around, throw the newspaper and yell, “Good morning, God dammit, Good morning!”

It was the fall of fifty-five or fifty-six, a few days before Halloween.  The four of us that usually ran together, Junior, Bobby, Joe, and I were walking home from school when Mr. McCandless accosted us in front of his house.  He was carrying a double-barreled shotgun.

He said, “I knowed it’s you boys that turned my shithouse over last year’s Halloween. I’m letten’ you know that I’m spendin’ the night in the shithouse with this here twelve gauge loaded with number six shot.  Jist letten’ you know afore you come messin’ around my shithouse.”

We assured him that it wasn’t us who turned his toilet over the previous year. But he had thrown down the gauntlet.  Now we had to do something.  We had a stock of cherry bombs, and M-80’s that we were saving for New Years, but decided now would be the appropriate time to use them.

We snuck through the woods and came up behind the shithouse. Junior threw a couple of rocks against the outhouse to ascertain if he was actually in there.  He hollered, “I told you,” and stuck the shotgun out the door and fired it.

Joe had the deepest voice and yelled, “Come out of that shithouse with your hands in the air or we will shoot.”

We started lighting the bombs and throwing them around the toilet.

Mr. McCandless yelled, “Git away from my shithouse,” and discharged both barrels through the door.

Mrs. McCandless, thinking that the old man was involved in a gunfight, yelled out the back door, “Herman, I called the Sheriff, stay in the toilet till he gits here.”

Hearing that, we all ran off through the woods.  By the time the deputy sheriff arrived we were safe in the old barn across the road from my house.  The sheriff picked up a group of boys from across the railroad tracks. They were on their way to turn the McCandless outhouse over.  It seems they had been the culprits the previous year.

The other Halloween that stands out in my mind was the year before my dad died.  Four sisters lived about a quarter mile down the road about a quarter mile from our house.  Their last name was Rising.  Most everyone referred to them as the Rising girls. I halfway had a crush on and lusted after one of them, but that is a story for another time. They went to a different school than we did.  The demarcation line between two school districts ran between our houses.  Our school bus came in from 411 and turned around at our drive.  Their school bus came in from 66 and turned around in their yard.

Their mother owned all the land across the road, including the old log barn across from my house.  We had used it for our cows for a while when Hurricane Hazel flooded out our barn.  Other than that it was vacant.  To us, it became the Alamo surrounded by Mexicans or Fort Apache surrounded by Indians.  To the Rising girls, it was a play house or a Sweet Shoppe for their girly games.

That Halloween they came up with the idea to turn it into a haunted barn.  They enlisted our help.  We thought it a good idea and fell enthusiastically into their plan.  They were cutting bats and spiders from craft paper and wanted us to make ghosts.  They had a bunch of old sheets and wanted us to stuff them with straw, paint eyes on them, tie a rope around them and hang them from the rafters. There were also four or five old pairs of overalls and shirts.  They wanted headless bodies lying around.

We worked hard making ghosts and dead bodies.  There was a bag of athletic tube socks included in the pile of clothing.  I came up with the idea and the others, enthusiastically joined in.

We stuffed the socks and put dicks on all the ghosts and dead bodies.

The girls discovered our additions to their creatures about the time my dad came home from work.  As he was getting out of his car, the youngest girl ran over to him and, crying said, “Mr. Salmons, we were trying to make a haunted barn and them mean old boys put Peters on all the ghosts.

My dad gave me a halfhearted ass whipping, but I figure he thought it was funny.  I heard him laughing about it when he told my uncles and cousins.

We had to make our fun at Halloween without the rewards of today’s tame trick or treating.

A Letter to Dad

Anonymous

I’m sitting in my room tonight, I don’t know where to begin
Mom and I are arguing, about writing you again
When I was young we always came
To see the monuments on the Mall
Mom would have me help find your name
Upon the Granite Wall
Mom always told me, you were watching from above
And that you were always with me, showering me with love
Hey dad did you see me hit the ball into the stand?
I was so excited I didn’t watch it land
I’ve been doing good In school, my homework I have saved
I still don’t understand Algebra, but I’m getting an outstanding grade
There is a play in Drama, I got an important part
I get to play the hero, and win the fair damsels heart
We got a small puppy and I named him Jax
He’s smart and energetic, he really loves his snacks
Do you remember Mrs. Bartlett, who lived two doors down
She always baked goodies, for all the kids in town
She got sick last year and passed away, we went to say goodbye
I asked her when she got to heaven if she would meet with you and say hi
We had to move to a new house, it’s small but very nice
The kids I met are different so I could use some advice
The kids here have both their parents, but the kids don’t spend the time
To talk to their parents, I think it’s such a crime
The kids don’t understand the precious gift they have
Of being able to actually talk to their mother and their dad
When I talk to you I know you’re listening, I often feel you near
On the letter tapes you sent to Mom, is a voice I love to hear
I’m learning of the war you fought in our history class
Now I have more questions that I need to ask
Why did you go there, when no one wanted war?
Was it really like they said, with protesters on our shore?
There was so much anger over the war, conflict and strife
But I’m proud of you being there, even though you lost your life
To have such a brave father, I’m proud as I can be
You gave your all for Country, to help others be free
I will not listen to the kids, when they tell all those lies
To me you are a true hero, true honor can’t be disguised
So this ends my letter. It’s now ready to send
Mom is still against it, she doesn’t understand
When she insists that it’s too dangerous to go down to the mall
I smile a small smile and say “58,307 Angels guard me by the Wall”

Ghosts at the River
By: Garland Davis

It happened on a clear night shortly before Halloween when I was a little boy. I think I was ten or eleven years old. I remember it well. It was the night the ghosts talked Grand Pap into whipping Uncle Buddy and me.

Seven or eight of my cousins, my brothers and I wanted to camp out overnight down by the river. Our parents said okay as long as Buddy stayed with us. Joe Davis Jr. (AKA Buddy) was four years old when I was born. He was more like an older cousin or brother that an uncle. Since buddy and I were the oldest kids, our folks gave us the responsibility of overseeing the activities along the river.

Our parents provided three or four packs of weenies, buns’ and mustard. We also had a box of graham crackers, marshmallows and a couple of Hershey bars each. We were set for a big night on the river.

It was between a quarter and half a mile to the area we had selected for a campground. Buddy had a large square of canvas that he and I pulled over a rope stretched between two trees and pegged the corners down, creating a tent-like structure to sleep in. We each had a quilt to wrap up in.

We set up the camp, gathered stones for a fire ring, pulled up logs to sit on, laid in enough dry wood to keep the fire going all night and settled in for a memorable night. The fire was started, after a couple of arguments about the best way to do it. My cousin Tony, a Boy Scout, tried to start it by rubbing sticks together and got mad when someone else struck a match and set his sticks on fire. This almost started a fight until Uncle Buddy threatened them with bodily harm.

Once the fire was going and the sun was sinking low, we settled in for supper. Weenies were roasted, hot dogs were consumed and marshmallow and chocolate sandwiches were eaten as the mosquitos began snacking on us. Green leaves and water plants were thrown onto the fire to create smoke. I don’t know whether it bothered the mosquitos more than it did us. It did seem to help a bit with the skeeters.

At sunset, as the dusk settled, my little brother and my cousins began to hear things moving in the woods. There was talk of alligators, ghosts, haints and painters (country for haunts and panthers). Buddy and I added to their unrest by periodically exclaiming, “Did you hear that! What’s that noise?”

Buddy says, “I’ll bet it is the haint of Jim Westmoreland and his four boys that drownded in the river back a few years ago. I’ve heered it said that if’n you call out their names, they will come and set with you.”

We were all quiet. One cousin, began crying, saying, “Don’t call them. I’m scared. I don’t want to set with no haints,” as the wind shook the leaves in the trees. By this time, I think staying close to the fire and the dark was the only thing that kept them from running for home.

We all gathered closer to the fire, one cousin adding more wood. I said, “Don’t use up all the wood, it’ll get dark and they will come for sure.”
Buddy laughing, calls out in a loud voice, “Jim, Jim Westmoreland, Bob Westmoreland!”

I joined in calling, “Franklin, Junior, come sit with us.”

My youngest brother begins crying, screaming “I want to go home.”
Buddy and I are laughing. The others are caught between laughing or running. More wood was thrown on the fire. By this time, we had a veritable bonfire going.

“Ooooo, Jim, Bob, William, Franklin, and Junior Westmoreland come set with us. Oooo.” Buddy says laughing. The younger kids were crying and begging to go home.

I threw a stone into the river and yelled, “They’re coming, I hear them in the river!”

My youngest brother wet his pants. The other brother and he broke for the path toward home, both screaming bloody murder. The others took off behind them leaving Buddy and me. Laughing, we put the fire out and followed the path back up to Pap’s house.

Pap was on his way to tend the mash barrels at his still as my brothers and a stream of cousins came screaming into the yard and house. Half of them had wet or messed their britches. They all had tears and snot running down their faces. Their mothers ran to comfort them while their dads were laughing saying, “They held out longer than I thought.”

It seems that a great flood of the river in the early nineteen hundreds had relocated the river from a point near Pap’s place to its present location. The Westmoreland’s had drowned just down from Pap’s still. He had been covering the mash barrels when Jim and his four boys appeared out of nowhere and told him. “Joe Davis, stop them boys from calling us. I thanks they need a good hidin’””

When Uncle Buddy and I got back to the house, Pap took his razor strop down and whipped our butts for disturbing the ghosts.

The Value of Bullshit

by Bob ‘Dex’ Armstrong

There were nights laying alongside with the old girl putting a strain on her lines, keeping her properly aligned in the nest, that it was damn good to be nineteen and alive. Looking back and sifting through the mental pictures that combine to form the ‘connect the dots’ that have become your life… They were some of the best days.

I became a ‘night person’ riding the boats. After 1600, the married guys slowly melted away… They had a place to go… People to see and things to do. But there were some of us who had no place to go or money to do it with… The boat was home… We were the raggedy-ass ‘stay aboards’… The kids who turned up for evening chow and some tired-ass movie.

When we got tired of the movie or found out it was one we had seen a half-dozen times on a run the year before, we’d crawl topside.

We had guys who knew guys on other boats and would go visiting. They were known as the ‘gahdam grasshoppers’.

“Hey Dex, you gonna go grasshoppering tonight? Or, you wanna get a Hearts game up?”

“Screw Hearts… I’m not up for losin’ another fist-load of wampum tonight. Think I’ll go up topside and if nobody has his ass planted on the after capstan, just sit and listen to the water slap up against the tanks.”

“Want company?”

“Sure why not? Grab your foul weather jacket and a cup of coffee… If you want something to sit on, there’s an empty MEK can up forward next to the trunk in the beartrap.”

Sharing time with a shipmate was not wasted time… Sharing dreams of what you wanted in the future… Knowing that a guy was helping to put his kid sister through nursing school or sending money to an eighty-year old granny to put a new roof on her falling down house, made it a lot easier to tolerate his stupid opinions, his idiotic devotion to a loser team and his loyalty to the Ford Motor Company. It is very easy to overlook a lot of dumb stuff a guy says when you know his mom is fighting a losing battle with a terminal condition. Knowing what is inside men’s hearts is what makes sub sailors a tight crew. Anyone who tells you otherwise, never rode smokeboats.

So you sat there, listening to the waves created by stuff passing up and down the Elisabeth river slosh up and down your tanks… Watched the shadows made by your screwguards on the gently rising and falling water between you and the next boat in the nest. You drank bottom of the pot coffee and flipped Marlboro butts into the darkness… Inventoried the stars and engaged in what was affectionately known to old-time boatsailors as ‘bullshitting’.

Civilians call it the art of ‘gentle conversation.’ The words ‘gentle’ or ‘genteel’ never fit the verbal exchange of submariners, so it was just called bullshitting.

Bullshitting in it’s purest form has a thread that allows you to jump from subject to subject… Apply totally stupid logic to solve exceptionally complex problems… Evaluate prominent people far more successful than yourself and discuss the probable merits of having sex with beautiful women who, on a clear day, wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot boathook.

“Dex, whad’dya think of that Sputnik?”

“I don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Think about Sputnik. Could care less… It’s a harmless little space toy. Can’t see why everybody figures it’s a big deal. Have no interest in space. To me, it’s a big empty void with nothing going on in it, like the inside of a basketball.”

“You think the gahdam Russians really want to blow us all up?”

“Who cares? Whatever you and I think doesn’t matter a whole helluva lot. If they try, they’re going to get one big surprise, ’cause they are going to get a butt-load of that stuff those boomer boats are hauling around and chunks of Russians and pieces of Russian-made crap is gonna be landing all over Kansas for three days.”

“You really think that?”

“Yeah.”

“How ’bout Kroot-chef?”

“What about Kroot-chef?”

“You think he’s a crazy man?”

“Hell, all Russians gotta be nuts… You gotta be crazy as a North Georgia hoot owl to live in that gahdam dump.”

“Dex, when you were a kid, were you scared of the atomic bomb?”

“Didn’t have time to be scared of the atom bomb… I was afraid that Dracula was gonna find me.”

“How old were you when you had your first sexual experience?”

“Eight.”

“Eight?”

“Yeah… We had a little girl in the neighborhood who set up a medical clinic in her old man’s tool shed. She got buck nekkit and let me examine her… I mean she hung her panties and pinafore on a lawn mower handle and Doctor Dex did a complete diagnosis. I couldn’t understand why her chest wasn’t getting lumpy and how in the hell a baby was gonna get out her belly button. My medical career came to ‘All Stop’ when her Mom caught us… My medical career lasted about thirty minutes and raised more questions than it answered.”

“I had somethin’ like that”

“Yeah… What happened?”

“I had an ugly cousin named Alice… She let me lift her dress and pull down her drawers.”

“You learn anything?”

“Yeah… It was a lot of fun.”

“How’d you end up riding the boats?”

“Wanted to get out of Utah.”

“Hell, there’s a lotta ways to get outta Utah without riding a gahdam submarine.”

“I just joined the Navy and ended up at New London… The rest kinda took care of itself.”

“You want another cup of coffee?”

“Sure, why not.”

“Hey Below!”

“Yo…”

“How ’bout one of you worthless bastards drawing two cups for two worthless idiots topside?”

“Sure thing… How do you take it?”

“Black and bitter… Make it two black and bitters.”

That is what bullshitting was. Aimless, go nowhere conversation between men who had no life beyond the tanktops. Lads whose closest friends slept in the same bunks on rotation. Kids in the sunrise of life, indivisibly forever linked by common experience that no one who never did it will ever understand.

Bullshitting was the natural mastic that bonded us in the cohesive team we were… It was the sticky side of the Submarine Force flypaper.

“Think I’ll head below, knock the lid out of a can of peaches then hit the rack.”

“There’s a couple of cans of peaches in the waterway outboard Stuke’s rack… The sonuvabitch has a fully stocked grocery store in that outboard waterway. That’s an E-3 secret so don’t let the below decks watch or anything above a second class catch you going in there… And also keep your mitts off the five boxes of Grape Nuts… They’re mine.”

“Do you guys always hold out on the crew?”

“It’s not holding out… It’s E-3 survival knowledge. When you get qualified, we’ll tell you where we stash the peanut butter. The COB found four boxes of Saltine crackers in the OBA locker and found out we had six frozen pizzas in a box marked ‘liver’ in the reefer. He was actually pissed… The idiot eats liver. We thought nobody actually ate liver on purpose.”

“Well, like I said… I’m heading below.”

“So go… Jeezus, you can’t get lost… Just follow the salvage air plates until you get to a big hole with light at the bottom of it.”

And so, you sat there. The air got chilly and every now and then the topside watch would wander aft… Check his lines and mumble some gripe about having the damn eight to twelve.

“Yeah, it’s a helluva way to make a living… And think we could be freckle inspectors in a WAVE barracks. If I ever catch the sonuvabitch that invented these diesel boats, I’m gonna cut out his heart and eat it.”

“Naw… He’s probably some officer who can smell a boatsailor a mile away.”

“Dick, anyone tell you, you are as nuts as me?”

“No, I’d kill myself.”

“You seen Stuke?”

“Yeah, he went over about an hour ago… Had some good-looking honey waiting for him up in the pierhead parking lot… He was looking for you… When he didn’t find you, he hauled.”

“My luck.”

“Gotta go scribble in the topside log.”

On a clear night you could count the stars up in that empty space and wonder if that Sputnik contraption was really up there running around.

You knew that somewhere, some place, Admiral Arliegh Burke had the helm. He knew and understood his bluejackets. With Admiral Burke standing the conn everything was going to be O.K…. I never had seen God so I didn’t know that he actually existed… But, I had seen Admiral Burke once, and that was all I needed… He was a man who was the ultimate leader and we all knew instinctively that he was the kind of sailor who fully understood the value of E-3 bullshit with coffee.