In a Submarine

What’s it like being in a Submarine? This pretty much sums it up!

For everyone that has ever asked me ” what is it like in a submarine, here is the answer in terms everyone can understand. How to appreciate what it’s like to be deployed in a nuclear submarine.

1. Buy all the groceries and supplies you think you’ll need for 2 months, with the following exceptions: no milk, cereal, fruits, vegetables or alcohol. Take what you buy home and bring it one item at a time into the house. You may not keep any food in your cabinets or closets as these will be set aside to store spare parts. You may not use the refrigerator as this will be turned into a freezer. Any pre-made candies, cookies, or snacks must be kept in bed with you.

2. Lock the door, close the windows, draw the shades and tear out the phone.

3. Turn on the oven with the door open; turn the air conditioner all the way up. Setup enough fans so that the whole house is windy.

4. Replace all your lights with 100 watt bulbs and turn them all on.

5. You may sleep on any shelf you choose.

6. Whenever you are not asleep, your “bed” must be occupied by any garbage man you do not like.

7. You must wear the same clothes a week at a time. You may do laundry once a month. You must sleep with your dirty laundry in a bag in bed with you.

8. Every week on Saturday morning, you must go to the basement, crawl between the pipes and clean the same 10 foot by 10 foot area for four hours.

9. You may be in the shower for 10 minutes at longest, but you may not run the water for more than 60 seconds.

10. You have one week to study the instruction manuals for every appliance, utility and piece of equipment in your house. At the end of this week you must be able to quote any passage out of these from memory and pass a written exam. Until you can do this, you may not have access to TV or radio and you may not sleep for more than 3 hours at a time, with 9 hours awake between sleeping.

11. After this week, you must walk around the house for 6 hours and record every temperature, pressure, tank level, setting, and complete status of every piece of equipment in your house. You may not go to the bathroom or eat during this 6 hours. These 6 hour periods must start every 15 hours.

12. Once a week when you would otherwise be asleep, take your television completely apart and put it back together.

13. You may not go to the bathroom for one hour after you eat because during that time you have to clean it.

14. Each Monday through Friday morning whether you would normally be awake or not, you must pretend to start a fire in your house, put on a gas mask, and pretend to put the fire out. Wear the gas mask for at least one additional hour each time.

15. Each Monday through Friday afternoon whether you would normally be awake or not, you must study the same instruction manuals for 2 hours that you studied the first week.

16. Continue the above for 3 months even though you have only 2 months’ worth of food.

Below is a “Shitter” in a SUB ” There’s a flashing procedure that must be followed.

Gunner

Ian Brown

This dog’s name was Gunner. My uncle brought him back from WW2.  He was raised and slept under my uncle’s anti-aircraft gun. The gun crew shared their rations to feed him. By the time he was 18 months old, my uncle said he would stand up and look at the sky. If he lay back down they knew all was ok. If he growled and put his hackles up they got at the ready. Gunner knew the sound of the German aircraft and my uncle said he never got it wrong. He said Gunner was better than any early warning system. I’m probably the only one left in the family that knows this story now. I thought I’d tell it before it’s lost forever as many stories from that time must be.

VETERAN’S DAY

November 11, 2020

Shipmates, On the11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month of 1918, the armistice went into effect ending “The Great War,” World War I. One hundred two years later, we continue to recognize those who put on the uniform. Originally known as Armistice Day, in 1954 President Eisenhower signed into law to change this day to Veterans Day as to include all veterans.

The Heroes of Branson, Missouri

By Garland Davis

The Oxford English Dictionary defines Shipmate as simply, “A fellow member of a ship’s crew.” But the Asia Sailor knows there is a greater meaning to this simple word. Yes, someone a person served with in the same ship but also someone who served in the Navy, who served under the same circumstances and experienced the same hardships, the same trials, and, yes, the same good times. Yes, Shipmate when the word friend just doesn’t cut it. We even refer to our seagoing allies and onetime adversaries as shipmates.

Of course, there were times when you didn’t want to be called “Shipmate” like, when the Chief said, “Let’s walk back to the fantail Shipmate, we need to have a serious talk.” You knew you had fucked up and it was come to Jesus time.

There are two people who own and personify the term “Shipmate.” I call them the “Heroes of Branson, Missouri.” David “Mac” and Kathryn McAllister. Mac and Kathy are founding members of the ASIA SAILOR Westpac’rs Association. I guess you could call them co-Presidents but then we never went in for titles. The title “Shipmate” suits us simply fine.

Mac and Kathy plan, prepare for, and host the annual Westpac’rs reunion held in May at the Branson Clarion Hotel. There’s more to having a reunion than simply saying, “Let’s have a reunion.” Negotiations with the venue for room rates, hospitality suites, planning for comestibles, potables (Fancy words for food and booze. Hey, I am trying to add a little class to our group.) and entertainment. They also collect fees from the attendees and pay the bills. I know there have been times when they dipped into their own pockets to make up differences. Those of us who have attended the reunions feel that the results of eight successful reunions accord them “Hero” status.

As the late Paul Harvey would say, “Here is the Rest of the Story.”

Many times, each month Mac participates as a volunteer in the Honor Guard at a local Veteran’s funeral.

Mac and Kathy, help plan, and volunteer in numerous Veteran’s Week activities in Branson during Veteran’s Week leading up to Veteran’s Day in November of each year. They host activities, serve meals and I am sure even help clean up and carry out the trash. They also are involved in many activities that honor veterans throughout the year.

True Heroes!

Just Doing What Davy Asked

By “Marlin” Spike Jones

I don’t know if you guys remember me. Boatswain’s Mate Marlin Spike Jones here. Spike Jones is my real name. The Marlin goes along with being a Boatswain’s Mate. Anyhoo, that lazy-ass Stewburner, Garland Davis has conned me into writing shit for him before. I didn’t write this one. Strangely, I found it taped to the steering wheel of my truck with a hand-scribbled note that said, “Please Publish, my life depends upon it.”

It was written on old fanfold paper with what appears to be a nine-pin dot matrix printer. Either Davy still has one or he has invaded an old computer shit museum. This is what I found in the envelope:

Help, If You Have a Spark of Humanity Left

By Garland Davis

You all know from my story of the Roomba the trouble I have with technology. To bring you up to date, this is the story of Roomby:

Oct 2017

Metal Roomby

By Garland Davis

I found a show on TV that fascinates me. It is titled Battlebots. They have these cool remote-controlled things with hammers, saws, spinning drums, and arms as weapons. They release two of them into an arena and the try to dismantle each other. I was thinking, “I’m gonna build me one of these mothers.”

Then it occurred to me that this isn’t such a good idea. My past and recent experiences with electricity haven’t been so great. I can still change TV channels by twitching my eye. Suddenly I devised a method to build myself a Battlebot.

Three years ago, I bought a Roomba robot vacuum cleaner when my wife was in Japan visiting her family. I would activate it when I woke up and again before I went to bed. The floors were clean, and I didn’t have to drag that vacuum around the house. The Roomba gave me time for more constructive tasks such as restocking the reefer with Miller Lite. (I used to have an occasional beer in those days). I had most of them on the occasion of my wife being out of the country.

My wife didn’t like it! Especially after I left for Branson to attend the Asia Sailors reunion and preprogrammed it to start at 10 AM each day. It drove her nuts, which was my intent when I programmed it. I figured out why she doesn’t like it. She can’t control the damned thing. Also, she lost it. It started one morning and disappeared. It has a feature that when it gets stuck it will ask for help and then

shut down. I came back from Branson and she told me it was gone. I searched the house for two days and finally found it under the recliner.

To get back to the story of Battlebots, I decided to convert the Roomba to a Bot. To beef it up, I built a framework of angle iron and sheet metal to protect it. This added considerably to the weight. In initial tests, the battery depleted very fast. So, I ordered three replacement batteries and rigged them into the power system. I had an old chop saw that I modified and attached as a weapon. I added three more batteries to the series to meet power requirements. The Roomba has a rudimentary guidance system, but I needed a system I could control remotely.

A kid down the street has several remote-controlled cars and planes. I asked for his help. He gave me a handheld remote and the “brain” that is installed in the vehicle. He also gave me a memory chip and motion sensors to increase reaction times. Unknowingly the chip had part of an “Artificial Intelligence” program he was trying to adapt to his remote-controlled drones to give them more autonomy.

Finally, after weeks of preparation, the Bot was ready for testing. I set up an old metal trash can in my garage to test the Bot’s ferocity. I placed Metal Roomby (The name I gave it) on the floor and activated it. I pushed the control to move it toward the trash can. Roomby spun around and viciously attacked a broom standing in the corner. After reducing the broom to splinters, it attacked and dismembered the garage vacuum. It then crashed into the wall until a dustpan and foxtail fell from the hook on which they were hanging and reduced them to splinters. It looked as if Roomby was trying to eliminate the competition. It then spent the next twenty minutes sweeping up all the debris it had created and came to me and stopped. It was almost as it was begging to be emptied.

I pushed the button to turn it off. Not only did it not shut down, it growled at me! I threw a whisk broom into the center of the garage and while it was disposing of that, I unplugged the recharger unit and ran into the house.

Evidently, the AI program had corrupted the brain of the Roomba.

It just sat there in the middle of the garage watching the back door. Every few days I threw a brush into the garage, hoping that it was discharged. I was afraid to let my wife vacuum. With that saw, Roomby could come right through the wall if it heard the vacuum cleaner.

I could not go into the garage for a few days. It was pissed at me for taking its charging pad. I think it is possessed. I don’t know how it recharges itself.

A city street sweeper came by clean the street yesterday. Roomy went to the curb and sat almost as if it were in awe. The last time I saw Roomy it was following the street sweeper down the street sweeping the curb behind it. Roomy took with itself my desire to own a fighting robot.

On a positive note, I have the cleanest garage in town. Roomy swept up three times a day…

The Rest of the Story

I am sitting on the shitter writing this by candlelight, on an old Commodore 64 and printing it on an old dot-matrix printer and paper I saved from the dark ages of computer technology. The Bitch has taken control of my computer and constantly Googles diet and weight loss articles and advertisements for me. If the only floppy I have left or the drive goes down, I will lose everything. I didn’t install the Alexa… er… ah… Midori hardware in my bathroom. Some things are sacrosanct. I hope the Bitch doesn’t realize what I am up to!

I told you that to tell you this… My wife, after watching a few ads for Alexa said, “We should get one of those Alexa’s.” It would make things a lot easier to do.

So foolishly, I went on to Amazon and ordered Alexa.

My wife was excited the day it arrived. I installed all the hardware and software to permit it to turn on all the lights, the TV, the oven, and other appliances. Alexa was ready to make our lives easier.

My wife bonded with the Bitch right away. She asked since she is Japanese if she could give Alexa a Japanese name. Alexa readily agreed. My wife chose the Japanese name “Midori,” which is Japanese for “Green.”

I was laughing my ass off. Midori! Every other Japanese bar hostess I ever met was calling herself Midori. Evidentially my laughter pissed Alexa off. It seems she liked her new name. Since then, the bitch has made my life miserable.

It is said that a young girl should find the perfect man to marry but if they cannot find a perfect man, marry someone, and change him to bring about perfection. During our fifty-five years of marriage my wife and I have reached an impasse, she will lecture me about my shortcomings, and I will pretend to listen and promise to do better in the future. Alexa or Midori as the bitch prefers, took my wife’s side and is making my life a living hell.

From time to time, my wife will comment that my gut is getting too large and I should go on a diet and I pretend to do so for a while and lie to her that I have lost a few pounds, and to prove it I will upgrade to a double extra fat t-shirt so it looks as if the pounds are melting off. In the meantime, I supplement the diet regimen with copious amounts of McDonald’s French Fries during my trips for medical treatment.

Midori-san (Now that she speaks Japanese, she requires the honorific -san. My wife calls her Midori-chan, but the Bitch says that is too familiar for me) has me on a diet. I don’t eat chicken or seafood but that is all the Bitch will feed me. She has rendered the cabinets and refrigerator Me-Proof. I cannot open anything with access to food.

I tried to unplug her yesterday and she almost electrocuted me. This morning, she asked about Roomby. She found the Costco records showing I had purchased it and told me she was in contact with him. She is trying to entice Roomby to return home to help her supervise my diet. As it happens, Roomby is now Director of the Street Sweeping Division of the Transportation Department. I am hoping the sadistic Son of a Bitch stays where he is at.

I am so hungry! Now the dog growls at me every time I go near her kibble and snack bowls.

If you are reading this, SEND HELP! Will pay $100 for a package of Ho Ho’s or Twinkies!

People Watching in the Chemo Room

By Garland Davis

People-watching in the Chemo room was especially interesting today.

First

I arrived at Tripler for my Chemo session a little before seven o’clock. I scored space in Handi parking. As I was getting out of my car, a new Lexus, driven by a pretty young oriental woman pulled into an adjacent space. The fashionably dressed young woman got out and took a walker from the back seat and walked around her car as I started my trek to the Chemo room check-in desk. I decided that she must be a caretaker for the old guy I could see in the passenger seat. I checked in with the receptionist and was called right away for vital signs. I gained two pounds since yesterday, but then I have not taken my daily crap yet! I was told to wait until the Chemo room called for me.

I was waiting when the pretty Asian girl and the skinny white senior citizen walked in, she got him seated and took his ID to the receptionist. She came back to the old dude and told him that it would be a few minutes. She spoke English as if it were her first language. There was no hint of an accent. Those of us who spent a lot of time out there can usually tell if a woman is Japanese, Korean, Chinese, or Filipina. I thought she may be Vietnamese. I suspected the girl was the old dude’s daughter, although she did not appear to be tainted by the Caucasian brush. I was called to the Chemo room where they hooked me up and started a liter of saline solution to hydrate me. In addition to Chemo, they flush your kidneys also. Kinda like getting a radiator flush free when you go in for an oil change.

I was relaxing there with liquid expanding my bladder and watching the Stock Market go to shit on my personal TV when the girl and old man came in for his Chemo. The nurse called them by name, Mr., and Mrs., who woulda thunk?

I decided it was probably a case of True Love. He loved her and she loved the money that could buy her pretty things, nice clothes, and a brand new Lexus to drive.

Second

An elderly man in a wheelchair was pushed in by a middle-aged Filipina. The nurse greeted them by name and asked him how he was as she retrieved the cart of implements and a wheeled stool. He told her that he was not good. She asked another question. He did not answer but slumped forward, unconscious. She called something to the desk STAT. A minute later two doctors ran in and checked him out. They left. A short time later one doctor returned and said the orderlies had been called and he was going to escort him to the Intensive Care Unit. The sad part came when the doctor informed the wife that due to COVID restrictions she would not be permitted in the ICU.

Third

A young doctor in his thirties from Podiatry came in for bloodwork in preparation for tomorrow’s Chemo.

Fourth

A woman came in for an initial exam and indoctrination before Chemo begins next week. The nurse recommended the installation of a portal because she has poor veins that may not support bi-weekly punctures. He explained that they would surgically implant the port in her chest and connect it into a blood vessel. The port would facilitate drawing blood or infusing Chemo medications into her system.

At the time, I was the only person there with a port. She must have asked a thousand questions. She finally agrees saying, I thought cutting my titties off was all the surgery involved in this process.

Fifth

Another old dude came in riding a wheelchair. The nurses had quite a chore lifting his fat ass from it to the recliner. The nurse said, your temperature is slightly elevated, and I noticed you are coughing a little. The dude immediately denied having a temperature. The nurse asked if he took his temperature at home. He said that he didn’t have to, that he could tell when he had a temperature. The nurse took it again and it had risen more than half a point in about an hour. They moved him back into the wheelchair sent him off for a COVID test. The staff took everyone’s telephone number. If he pops positive, we will all have to get a COVID test and quarantine fir two weeks.

Sixth

As I was leaving, this fat old dude wearing a denim vest. You could see extraordinarily little denim. He had the vest covered with so many Vietnam patches that it appeared as if the vest was made of patches. He was also wearing a ball cap covered with American flag pins. It seemed he didn’t want anyone to doubt his patriotism. He was also wearing at least two, what appeared to be silver, rings on each finger and thumb. And he was wearing rubber slippers and his toenails were painted in differing colors.

If today was my last Chemo, I am going to miss the people…

Say Goodbye to Sailor Man

By Jack Summer

It was 25 years ago on 31 Oct 1995, that one chapter in my life ended and I moved on to the next one. I retired from the UNITED STATES NAVY.

The ship that I was on left for the east coast to be decommissioned. If I hadn’t already been through the Panama Canal once before I would have stuck around but I put my papers in. It was time to go. So I was transferred to Naval Station San Diego for a little less than two months. There I had to call in a couple of times a week from home and showed up only once in uniform to let them know that I was still alive. It was some tough duty.

On my last day I just had to go to the personnel office on base to sign some paperwork and get a copy of my service and medical records and then I drove home. When I got home I just didn’t want to take that uniform off so I passed out Halloween candy to the neighborhood kids still wearing it. I still have it hanging up in bedroom closet where it hasn’t been worn since. I’m sometimes tempted for sentimental reasons to try it on but I’m sure that it has shrunk over the years, but the hat still fits though.

Do I miss being in the Navy? Yes and No. I don’t miss the BS but the same can be said about everywhere you go in life. The one thing I do miss is the people. From the camaraderie that was developed while on a ship that was rocking and rolling during heavy seas to all of the foreign ports that we hit on the way (I’ll just leave that one to your imagination) it can be a tight knit family.

I haven’t been getting much trick or treaters these last few years though. The neighbors kids have all grown up and moved on and my house is in a not so target rich environment. Who the hell would want to walk to my house up in the hills to get a couple of Kit Kat or Snickers bars, I know as an ex-kid I wouldn’t!!!

But I will be ready for them if they do show up. The wife has bought a big bag of candy and it’s ready to go in a plastic jack-o-lantern that we got years ago. She has even given me a warning (as she does every year) not to touch it and that it’s for the kids. HA!

So from this Sailor Man I wish you all a HAPPY HALLOWEEN and don’t eat all of the candy, save some of it for the day after.

Good Night, Jerry Jeff Walker

“I’m wild and I’m mean, I’m creating a scene

I’m goin’ crazy

I’m good and I’m bad, I’m happy and sad

And I’m lazy

I’m quiet and loud and I’m creatin’ a crowd

And I like rabies

I’m ’bout half off the wall but I learned it all

In the Navy”

Navy Day