Asia Sailor’s Rules

By: Garland Davis

The following rules are promulgated to guide the societal actions of the Asia Sailor:

1. Under no circumstances may an Asia Sailor share an umbrella with another man
2. An Asia Sailor may cry ONLY under the following circumstances:
3. When a heroic dog dies to save its master.
4. The moment Salena Gomez starts unbuttoning her blouse.
5. At the decommissioning of a proud old ship.
6. At the final memorial for a shipmate.
7. An Asia Sailor may legally kill anyone who brings a camera to a party in the Barrio.
8. Unless he murdered someone in the Asia Sailor’s family. The Asia Sailor must bail a shipmate out of jail within twelve hours.
9. An Asia Sailor’s shipmate’s daughter or sister is off limits unless he actually marries her.
10. An Asia Sailor must never complain about the brand of free beer in a shipmate’s fridge. However, bitching is permissible if the temperature of said beer is unsuitable.
11. No Asia Sailor shall ever be required to buy a birthday present for another man.
12. On a road trip, the Asia Sailor with the strongest bladder determines pit stops, not the LantFlt Yeoman with the weakest bladder.
13. An Asia Sailor stumbling upon a shipmate watching a sporting event, may ask the score of the game but never ask who is playing.
14. There is never a valid reason for an Asia Sailor to watch men’s ice skating or men’s gymnastics. Ever! However, watching Michelle Wie play golf is permissible.
15. It is permissible for an Asia Sailor to drink a fruity alcohol beverage only when it is MOJO and he is sunning on a tropical beach in Barrio Barretto, and the beverage is prepared and delivered by a topless LBFM and only if another Asia Sailor paid for it.
16. An Asia Sailor always accepts free drinks.
17. Only in situations of moral and or physical peril is an Asia sailor permitted to kick another man in the nuts.
18. Asia Sailors never wear Speedos and never lets a shipmate do so. This issue is closed.
19. If another sailor’s fly is unzipped, that’s his problem. An Asia Sailor doesn’t notice such things.
20. Female sailors who claim to be Asia Sailors are to be treated as spies until they demonstrate the ability to pull a Seventy-Two in the Barrio and drink as much San Miguel as the Male Asia Sailor.
21. When an Asia Sailor compliments a shipmate on his six-pack, of course, he is talking about the beer the shipmate is carrying.
22. An Asia Sailor talking to a hot suggestively dressed LBFM in a club must always have enough Pesos for the Bar Pine.
23. An Asia Sailor never hesitates to reach for the last San Miguel or the last stick of Monkey Meat, but not both, that is just greedy.
24. An Asia Sailor never joins his wife or girlfriend in discussing a shipmate, unless she is withholding sex pending his response.
25. An Asia Sailor never talks to another man in the head unless they are on equal footing (i.e., both urinating, both waiting in line, etc.). For all other situations, only an almost imperceptible nod is appropriate.
26. An Asia Sailor never lets a telephone conversation with his wife or present shack up to go longer than he can have sex with her. Hang up when necessary.
27. The morning after an Asia Sailor and a female who was formerly “just a friend” have carnal, drunken, monkey sex and the fact that they are feeling weird and guilty is no reason not to nail each other again before the discussion occurs about what a big mistake it was.
28. It is acceptable for an Asia Sailor to drive a woman’s car. It is never acceptable for her to drive his.
29. An Asia Sailor never buys a brown, pink, lime green, orange, or sky blue car. Never!
30. A woman who replies to the question, “What do you want for Christmas?” with “If you love me, you will know what I want!” gets laid Christmas morning by her Asia Sailor. End of story.

We sincerely hope this clears up any confusion.

The Asia Sailor Westpac’rs Association, Ltd.

P.S. Add something about an Asia Sailor never rubbing sunblock on another dude!

To follow Tales of an Asia Sailor and get e-mail notifications of new posts, click on the three white lines in the red rectangle above, then click on the follow button.

A native of North Carolina, Garland Davis has lived in Hawaii since 1987. He always had a penchant for writing but did not seriously pursue it until recently. He is a graduate of Hawaii Pacific University, where he majored in Business Management. Garland is a thirty-year Navy retiree and service-connected Disabled Veteran.

Beer for Breakfast

Beer for Breakfast

Garland Davis

Early one day when the sun wouldn’t shine

I walked into the Hole in the Wall not feeling too fine

I saw two sailors with two honey-ko’s an’ San Miguel before ’em

And this was the song that I heard them singing

Chief forgive us and protect us,

We’ve been drinking beer for breakfast

Well my LBFM and I stopped by the table where they was sitting

And I couldn’t believe how drunk they were getting

I said “shipmates, have you been drinking long?”

They said ‘Just long enough to be singing this song”

Chief forgive us and protect us,

We’ve been drinking beer for breakfast

Well they passed me a bottle and I took a little sip

And it felt so good I just couldn’t quit

I drank some more and next thing I knew

All of us were sitting there singing this tune

Chief forgive us and protect us,

We’ve been drinking beer for breakfast

One by one every shipmate who could hear the sound

Heard our ruckus and they came around

And pretty soon the Hole was ringing

With the sound of the every sailor laughing and singing

Chief forgive us and protect us,

We’ve been drinking beer for breakfast

Snipes

By: Garland Davis

They were the engineers who made the steam, the electricity, the water, ran the auxiliary machinery and made the ships go. They were the MM’s, BT’s, EM’s, EN’s, HT’s, IC men, MR’s and some that I have probably forgotten. They took on the fuel that they turned into the steam that moved the ship and made the electricity. They inhabited the lower levels of engineering spaces, crawled through bilges and other tight places into which only an idiot would enter… Sweating, joking and cussing the whole time. They tore clothes, skinned their knuckles and burned themselves with steam and hot water. Through cold northern seas and the sweltering tropic oceans, they kept the ships moving and the machinery operating.

They were not all greasy apes with an oily rag in one hand and a stolen crescent wrench in the other. They were intelligent young men with pride in their spaces and the jobs they did. The brightest of them ended up as doctors, lawyers and college professors. I knew an ENFN that went on to earn a PHD and was involved with the Space and Shuttle programs at Jet Propulsion Laboratories.

They were usually referred to as Fuckin’ Snipes by their fellow crewmembers. They were Snipes because they wanted to be.

They happily tended the machinery of their hot, noisy world. They crawled through small nasty places. They were shocked, pinched and thrown about. They were wet and cold, wet and hot, wet and oily. The humidity of their spaces was always at one hundred percent.

They routinely worked around the clock to get a piece of machinery fixed that some officer had just told them would take yard birds and naval engineers to repair. However, they fixed it anyway and sent a “fuck you” off to the naval engineers. During these marathons, they lived on “black gang coffee” and baloney sandwiches eaten with greasy hands. They smoked cigarettes only half way down before forgetting or the smokes became too nasty to smoke from the oil on their fingers.

At times, they did their work with the delicate skill of a surgeon and at other times with the force of pry bars and large hammers. They often lifted extremely heavy weights in spaces too small for the number of men needed to do the job safely. They stuck their hands in places where wayward electrons might be waiting to kill. They were contortionists having to get in the most awkward positions to fix things placed in stupid places by those brilliant naval engineers and yard birds. “Fuck’em.”

They wore their badge of office with pride. The torn, greasy and acid-eaten dungarees… their hands always black with grease in the pores and cracks of their knuckles.

Shipmates in the “Basement.”

For My Shipmates

THIS ONE FOR MY SHIPMATES. ONLY A REAL SAILOR CAN READ THIS AND UNDERSTAND AND LAUGH.

I didn’t write this but it sure is a fun one…

Me and Willy were lollygagging by the scuttlebutt after being aloft to boy-butter up the antennas and were just perched on a bollard eyeballing a couple of bilge rats and flangeheads using crescent hammers to pack monkey shit around a fitting on a handybilly.

All of a sudden the dicksmith started hard-assing one of the deck apes for lifting his pogey bait. The pecker-checker was a sewer pipe sailor and the deckape was a gator. Maybe being blackshoes on a bird farm surrounded by a gaggle of cans didn’t set right with either of those gobs.

The deck ape ran through the nearest hatch and dogged it tight because he knew the penis machinist was going to lay below, catch him between decks and punch him in the snot locker. He’d probably wind up on the binnacle list but Doc would find a way to gundeck the paper or give it the deep six to keep himself above board.

We heard the skivvywaver announce over the bitch box that the breadburners had creamed foreskins on toast and SOS ready on the mess decks so we cut and run to avoid the clusterfuck when the twidgets and cannon cockers knew chow was on.

We were balls to the wall for the barn and everyone was preparing to hit the beach as soon as we doubled-up and threw the brow over.

I had a ditty bag full of fufu juice that I was gonna spread on thick for the bar hogs with those sweet Bosnias. Sure beats the hell out of brown bagging. Might even hit the acey-duecy club and try to hook up with a Westpac widow. They were always leaving snail trails on the dance floor on amateur night.

If you understand this, you’re true blue and gold!

WWII Veterans

The following was posted by a shipmate, Bob Walker on Facebook today:

Coming home today, I drove past my dentist’s office. Instead of calling to check on an appointment I have later this week, I decided to stop in and check on it. I’m glad I did.

When I entered, I noticed a gentleman sitting in the waiting area with a WW2 Veteran hat on. I took care of my business, and he was still there when I reentered the waiting area. I walked over to him and thanked him for his service. I was wearing my USS Nashville ball cap, and he asked me if I was in the military. I told him I was retired from the Navy, and he said, sit down, son, and let’s talk.

His name is Adrian, I won’t reveal his full name. He was a medic with the 95th Infantry, serving in Germany and France. His unit had 2 medics for about 150 men, and they called him “The Man”. Among other things we talked about, he told me stories of liberating a concentration camp, the ones still alive hadn’t eaten in weeks, and were eating the flesh of the recently deceased. He closed his eyes and leaned back, and said he could still see it and smell it, even today.

He said Hitler had a plan to create a master race, and rule the world. I told him that thanks to men like him, it didn’t work out that way.

We sat and talked for about 10-15 minutes, not a long time, and I wish I could have stayed and talked with him for hours.

Folks, these are the men who saved our world over 70 years ago, and there aren’t many of them left with us. If you see someone wearing a WW2 Veteran hat, take a moment to thank them. Then take a few more minutes to ask them about their service. It doesn’t take much, only a few minutes out of your busy day… but I think it’ll mean the world to these heroes.

Bob’s story reminded me of an incident that happened to me about ten years ago:

A few years ago, I had an appointment at the Internal Medicine Clinic at Tripler Army Medical Center. This was before I began to manifest the symptoms of my Parkinson’s disease. As I entered the elevator, an Army officer in a camo uniform rushed past me into the nearly full elevator. I noticed an elderly couple also nearing the elevator and stopped the door to hold the elevator for them.

As the couple entered the elevator, the officer groaned and said, “For Christ’s sake.”

The elderly couple told me they were going to the same floor I was. As the elevator reached our floor and opened the officer pushed his way to the front, upsetting the lady, who would have fallen if I hadn’t caught her. Her husband also clutched my arm to maintain his balance. I helped them from the elevator and asked where they were going. As it happened, the were also going to Internal Medicine. I took my time and assisted them with a couple of stops to rest.

Once we reached the clinic, I helped them to check in and got them seated. As I completed my check in, the rude Army officer came from the back and sat down in the waiting area.

I walked over to him and said, “Major, if you don’t mind I would like to talk to you outside.”

We went out into the foyer. I said, “Major you owe that old man and woman an apology. When you pushed the aside exiting that elevator, they both almost fell. I see you are wearing the Combat Infantry Badge which tell me you have seen combat. Did you notice that old gentleman’s ball cap is embroidered with the Marine Corps device and the words Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa? There are also Gunnery Sargent’s chevrons, as well as the ribbons for the Pacific Theater, the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star.”

He stared at me for a minute, turned and reentered the waiting room, walked over to the couple, knelt and talked with them for about ten minutes. He shook their hands, stood and rendered a hand salute.

He walked to me and said, “Sir, may I ask, what is your rank?”

I told him, “I am a retired Navy Chief Petty Officer.”

He shook my hand, said, “I always heard that Chiefs were a bunch of Hard-asses.” He saluted me and walked to his seat.

The Tiger Bar

By: Garland Davis

I met Ray in Yokohama in 1964 shortly after I reported to the Navy Housing Command there. Ray was thirty-one or two years old. He was a Third Class Commissaryman with three hash marks. We became good friends. Ray overlooked the fact that I was a twenty-year-old Second Class CS. He never seemed to resent my success and appeared to take pride that I outranked him.

Ray’s greatest talent was a hollow leg. He could drink more without ever showing signs of being drunk than anyone else I ever met. I once saw him drink a fifth of Canadian Club in about a six hour period and drive to the package store for another.

I guess the reason Ray and I became such good friends was because we shared the same goals. Beer and Pussy.

During the early and mid-sixties, the currency exchange rate was 360 Japanese Yen to One U.S. Dollar. Prices were cheap in the Japanese bars. Beer was usually 100Y and Whiskey water was 100Y or 150Y. Nikka Whiskey (personification of rotgut) and water could be had for 50Y. A short time with a girl usually cost 500Y to a 1000Y and an overnight about 2000Y or 3000Y. Ten dollars would pay for a memorable liberty and you would have to throw some coins away so you could say you came back broke. It was sort of like paradise.

Ray and I spent many memorable evenings in the bars of Isezaki-cho and China Town. There was a short alley in Chinatown. It was shown on the Security Department maps as Four and a Half Street. The Tiger Bar was one of Ray’s favorite places. There was the Mama-san and three older women who worked there. They were famous for the 500Y BJ’s in the back booth.

Ray shipped over for orders to Vietnam. Volunteers for Nam supposedly got a choice of duty afterward. Ray wanted to come back to Japan.

He collected a $600 reenlistment bonus for his six-year commitment. Ray insisted that I accompany him to Chinatown that night. After a stop at the Zebra Club for a few, he set a course for the Tiger Bar. There were no other customers as we entered the bar.

Mama asked, “What you want Ray.”

Ray placed Y72,000 ($200) on the bar and said, “Lock the door and everybody get naked.”

A memorable time was had by all.

Innocent
By: Garland Davis

Johnny was in love! She was the prettiest, most innocent girl who had ever actually talked to him and she said she loved him. She had told him so. He had met Mercy last week. She was a hostess at a bar on Magsaysay Avenue in Olongapo, just outside the gate of the Navy Base at Subic Bay in the Philippines.

She wasn’t like the other girls he had met in the bars. Mercy had explained to him that she was working as a hostess during the summer to pay her tuition at the University in Manilla for next semester. She explained that she only worked for drinks and didn’t go to the hotels with the sailors like the other girls did. She was a good girl and saving herself for the man she really loved.

Johnny had seen her every day except Friday when he had the duty. She told him that she was so in love with him and decided that tonight she would give herself to him. But she asked him for a favor. Her mother needed to see a doctor and Mercy asked him to loan her two thousand Pesos.

As soon as “Knock off” was passed, Johnny was in the shower, shaved and ready for a night of love. He was first off the brow when “Liberty Call” was passed. A quick stop at the Spanish Gate for a hamburger and then to the money changer. Johnny changed a hundred-dollar bill he had been saving to buy a stereo system when the ship reached Japan. The exchange rate was a little over forty pesos to one dollar. Johnny had over four thousand pesos. If she needed it, he would give it all to Mercy.

Johnny knew that Mercy didn’t start work until six, so he had a couple hours to have some beer. He was still having a problem that such a ravishing woman could love an Iowa clod-kicker like him. He heard country music emanating from a bar and stuck his head in for a look around. A couple of deck apes from the ship were at a table with two girls. One of them yelled, “Hey, Johnny, come alongside.”

By the time, Johnny was seated, a cold San Miguel was placed in front of him and someone took his arm and asked, “May I sit with you?” A very pretty girl smiled shyly at him.

“Yeah, Okay, sure,” Johnny stammered. He was astounded. She was even prettier than Mercy.

“My name is Amelia. What is your name?” the girl said with a smile.

“Johnny,” remembering that the girls got paid for drinks, Johnny asked, “Would you like a drink.”

“Yes, thank you,” she said as she signaled the waiter.

Johnny spent a pleasant hour drinking beer and talking with Amelia. She asked if he had a girlfriend and, for some reason, Johnny had told her no. Amelia said, “Can I be your girlfriend? I have a small apartment nearby. If you pay my bar fine, we can be together until tomorrow.”

“I have to go someplace for a little while and meet a friend from the ship,” Johnny told her. “I will be back later,” he added, with no intention of returning.

“I will be waiting.”

As Johnny left the Country Bar, he saw Mercy and a sailor she was clutching by the arm enter the door of a hotel across the street.

Johnny turned back to the bar and said, “Amelia, I changed my mind, let’s have a few more drinks and go to your place.

A Memory Past

By: Garland Davis

I awaken each morning and somehow remember less

From the ships’ names to the blue uniform called dress.

The moments of the past just barely linger,

I try to grasp them but the memories evade my clutching fingers.

Small flashbacks from Taipei long ago,

But they fade to Subic or was it Hong Kong as the days go.

A man came today and brought a suitcase with him,

He filled it from my closet, filled it to the brim.

I could see the sadness in his eyes as I asked where we were going,

He wrapped me in his embrace, and said, “Shipmate” as the tears were flowing.

I don’t know this person, I wanted to scream,

“Who is this stranger?” I ask myself as sanity seems to sunder at the seam.

The sad man led me to the car with a suitcase in his hand.

His cheeks were wet, so were mine. The moment hard to understand.

We were at a large building and he led me inside.

People in white and blue came to get me. I wanted to run and hide

They asked questions, pictures and images came in blurs.

A lady stepped up and took my hand gently in hers.

She led me to a chair and placed a blue band on my wrist.

A man stared at me, wet face, eyes transfixed.

They asked my name, but I don’t know you see.

The writing on the band says Chief Petty Officer.

Now I remember, that is me.

Wynyard Sailor

Ray Mathew

Sailor, we all stare at you.

Not because we are laughing;

nor that we envy

the bottle on your hip

(beer as we know, should be cold)

and that girl with her grip

monkey-tight in your pocket

(better the blondes that grow old).

Sailor, we all stare at you.

Not because we are laughing,

although your wide trousers

go flippity-flap

(we have worn clothes as odd)

and if your hat

makes a sailor suit boy of you-

they say it’s the young who are god.

Sailor, we all stare at you,

because you are mystery:

one who has walked

on the dark of the green,

while we were afraid to be drowned;

one who has been

with the seas of great silence,

and now touches ground.

Sailor, we all stare at you,

because death has been under you;

days have been seas;

you have cast off from land,

and now you’ve no home.

While we who have manned

this old coffin earth

have never, will never

face death having known.