My Collective Meanderings

Or

Six Years Before the Shaft

A semi fictional biography

 

Chapter 1

 

The Intro

 

Let me tell you about my home state, sometimes referred to as confusion (that’s only funny if you live in the US).  It's amazing the people you meet there and it is quite easy to become lost, especially if you know your way around.  And I do seem to get around a lot, though much less these days.  The problem is I'm too busy and it is possible, even probable, that I'm still totally lost but haven't looked up from whatever it is I'm doing long enough to notice it.  I'm always busy and never getting done the really important things like writing a book and climbing Mt. Everest and skiing the K12, naked.  I’m sure most everyone feels that way these days, so why not take a break and read my story. Let me take you on a little excursion into the military’s version of Disneyland’s jungle cruise.  Parental Warning:  There is the occasional explicative here-in because that’s how people talk in the Navy.  In fact, for a more realistic experience I suggest randomly adding in swear words to all dialog, especially ones starting with “F”.  In fact, if you want to get real creative, you can try inserting them in the middle of words.  Call it creative syllabic explicative insertion.

"So goes it," as my father used to say (he didn’t really).  Life seems to repeat itself, and in my case it's the same mistake which I seem to be repeating over and over.  At least this time there is hope.  This time there is a chance it can all be worked out.  And this time it's a lot easier to escape.  It's like that Star Trek (the dull generation, where the universe is a happy place and Klingons are our friends) episode where they're caught in this time loop and each time they get a little closer to solving the problem.  I suppose one must know what he is escaping from if he is going to make a good job of it.  To escape from myself would be a good trick, a good one indeed.  But it seems that wherever I go there I am, still very much myself as if there had to be this one constant in the universe.  And if I woke up to find that I was no longer myself how would I know?  Maybe I should send myself a letter as a reminder...

Anyway it's all a load of Yak manure really as any decent philosopher would tell you though more elegantly I suppose.  You and I are not the same persons we were a month ago, or even a day or hour or second ago, either physically or otherwise.  And anyone who knows a good philosopher will tell you he's a lazy bum and a leach to boot.  They should all be taken out and made to put in a decent days work.  Take Karl Marx for instance.  The dirt bag made his poor wife support their meager existence while he sat at home whining about how unfair things were for the working classes.  I believe the best test of any idea is how well it works, and guess what Karl..!  So I've been considering going insane for while just to try it out but I could never quite work out the how part.  There are several other problems involved too, not the least of which being...well...if it turns out not to be such a great idea how would one go about becoming sane again?  I've always suspected, though, that the crazy people really had something going.  You know what I mean?

 

Well I'm not getting anywhere like this but at least I'm getting something done, and that was on my list of things to do today.  That’s kind of a new thing for me because before, when I was in the navy, when you did something you were supposed to, like your job for instance, it didn't actually get you anywhere.  You hadn't really accomplished anything.  It's not as if you could stand up and say “Look, I accomplished this here thing and because of it the world is a slightly better place.”  I'd have even settle for a slightly different place.  But no, our efforts just kind of floated off to mingle with the everyone else’s in an aimless drifting mish-mash of efforts.  It's all very existential (all existence and no essence).  To really do something we had to be more creative with our time.  We must needs allowed (grammar ouch) our imaginations to tear us away from reality, which by-the-way is in violation of article 539.13 section 12 paragraph 8 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, hereafter referred to as the UCMJ, and generally in violation of command policy.  Maybe if I’d had just a little more imagination I could have been totally out of touch with the real world.  That's not what I mean though.  What I mean is I might actually have done something of socially redeeming value.  This could constitute a contradiction in terms in a world which still allows accordions to be played in public, or considers images of Roseanne Barr projected onto a cathode ray tube to be good entertainment.  (Whoa,  Editor’s Note: According to the latest statistics I just insulted most of America.  My sincerest apologies America, I've been at sea for quite a while and wasn't aware of current social trends when I wrote that.)

OK, let’s go back in time a bit so I can stop writing in the past tense, back to about 1990.  If I've learned anything in life I've probably already forgotten it.  Except there was one good bit I learned from a little short fella named Ore who would always walk around with crabapples in his cheeks, and that is that there is no such thing as a catch 22 provided you just have a little imagination.  Imagination is a wondrous thing.  It is the ability to see and hear things which do not exist.  Imagination is definitely not how I got here, and here is definitely not as I imagined it would be.  I should take a moment to explain where here is.  ‘Here’ is the USS Truxtun, part of the United States' fleet of fighting ships.  Geographically 'here' is a little harder to define because we move around a lot.   Consequently the thoughts recorded ‘here’ are a little disjointed on occasion, and the underlying thread connecting them all may from time to time be tenuous at best.  Nevertheless, I am for the time being, still very much a resident of my home state as are several of my friends whom I will talk about later.  In any case it would take a very sick mind to dream up a place as absurd and childishly ridiculous as this.  Its not the kind of place that gets dreamed up.  It just sort of comes into being.  And how I came to be in it is a story for another time, but I do believe this is deteriorating into a story of sorts.  One about someone who's life contains a surprising number twists which are not the least bit remarkable, and which taken as a whole amount to nothing much really.  The only reason they are worth mentioning is that they are....out of the ordinary, and they are to blame for this character's preponderance of and propensity for absurd and unusual situations.  And having said that I will not say any more about it.  I'm not even sure yet if I'm going to write a story about it.  That remains to be seen.

In a story by the long deceased Dr. Voltaire, there was this philosopher, who was the enduring companion of the main character who was a virtuous young man aptly named Candide.  The two had many medieval adventures and suffered much together, as people often did in medieval times.  The philosopher had somehow arrived at the belief that they lived in the best of all possible worlds, and naturally anything that happened in the best of all possible worlds was for the best.  Call me a cynic but I've seen a good many situations which could have been better.  Hell, my whole life could have been better.  Not that I'm complaining, you understand.  There is a good bit of irony in it though, especially of late.  I must admit that I really do enjoy irony (I believe it is a distant relative of gloating actually, I'll ask God about that when I see him), its a dark kind of humor.  So you see everything really does work out for the best...Not! You're probably saying to yourself, "Thank you so much for taking time to sharing this little anecdote with us Uncle Mark (that’s me)."  Anyway aren't anecdotes something the doctor gives you for, say, a snake bite for instance?  Or is that the antidote?  I can never tell the difference.  I'm one of those speling impared; gramatically’ challenged, people (thank God for spell checkers).

 

I probably should give you a little background before rambling on interminably (too late).  I am in the Navy you see (yes, I'm sorry too).  Not only that, I am on the USS Truxtun (a sudden ominous hush spreads over the crowd):  Missile carrying nuclear (pronounced nuc-u-ler, just ask any southern senator, or president/ex-peanut farmer) cruiser (pronounced croooozer) at large.  Known throughout the recognizable universe for its great skill and redundancy in executing circles and figure-eights under even the most adverse conditions.  And I am a nuc-u-ler janitor at large, able to sweep small dust bunnies into a single mound.  Please note that in the military we do not 'perform', we 'execute'.  We do not clean, we ‘field-day’.  We do not communicate, we ‘promulgate’.  Ars Navagandi Infeleditus Adnausium.  We have many moral enhancing team spirit building mottoes.  Some of which you’ve heard, like, “Go Navy,” and “A clean ship is a happy ship.”  But the Truxtun had some of its very own mottoes.  For example, "We saved the whale in ’89," which was coined after we helped free a whale from some fishing nets.  Its popularity dropped measurably in ’92 when we ran it over and badly wounded it.  We did however get this splendid letter of appreciation from the Captain Ahab Society which looks very nice next to our Neptune Society humanitarian award.  One of my favorites is "USS Truxtun, when it absolutely positively has to be there on time."  There were even little buttons made up with those words of wisdom, which were given out to the crew members free of charge.  In spite of this, the former saying was far surpassed in popularity by this saying: "If it absolutely positively has to be there on time, use Federal Express because half our shit is broken."  Even more popular though not as yet command endorsed are the immortal words of Chester Cheetah "It ain't easy being cheesy."  And finally, to be fair, I should include the much despised Truxtun pep squad cheer "Team Truxtun Can Do".  This was a favorite of my friend “Spunky Bob” White.  None of us are really sure what it is that we "Can Do" but it is rumored this may be a form of disinformation designed solely to confuse our enemies.  I have great faith in this mighty warship and it's ability to recognize and dispatch any enemy who might wander up, proverbial hands tied behind his or her back, and boldly identify his or herself as an enemy.  But alas we are not fighters like in the Army or the Marines, we're not lovers either since we seldom see our loved ones or even females in general.  Though I guess if the future President, known also as the claymation star of Saturday Night Live, 'Mr. Bill [Clinton]' has his way we will indeed be lovers.  Which is OK with Spunky Bob.  But in reality, we are...well.... janitors and paper pushers, and there is little dignity in that.

I've come to feel somewhat at home here, like the way you get used to a persistent pain or a missing tooth, or even an old pair of underwear.  Although I am about 1200 miles from my home town there is something very familiar about the state I'm in.  I can't quite put my finger on what it is but I know what it isn't.  Here is a partial list;

 

From the home office....

 

Tonight’s Top Ten List

Things that don't give me that familiar homelike feeling;

 

10) Sharing a room with 50 other guys.

9) Sharing a bathroom which is always backing up with 100 other guys.

8) Having the scent of Eau-De-Septic Tank spread throughout the ship daily by the ventilation system.

7) That special camaraderie where your fellow roommates feel that they can borrow your things without telling you, and without giving them back.

6) Rocking back and forth and pitching from side to side like in the old Star Trek episodes while trying to do all those things which people who live in normal gravity take for granted.

5) Cleaning slimy, greasy bilges late into night.

4) Working in the indentured servitude atmosphere.

3) Working for people who were often ridiculed and relieved of their lunch money as children.

2) Working with children.

1) Having the table condiments come to you of their own accord.

 

If I may digress for a moment, please, I will mention that I was raised on Late Night with Letterman way back in the early NBC days when you had to stay up ‘till 12:35 and the Top Ten List only aired on Fridays.  “Here’s Johny” Carson’s Late Show came on first and it was so not funny.  I’m sorry but Johny Carson is only funny if its like, 1950.  You kids today have got it sooooo easy.  And don’t even say “who’s Dave Letterman” or I’ll kick your @#$%.  And while I’m on this subject (???) you don’t know what “generation gap” is unless you have parents that were born pre-1940.  Don’t even get me started on that either.

 

Back to the story.  There are a myriad of little absurdities and annoyances which I and my friends experienced from day to day, some as insignificant as having to drink bitter industrial strength coffee (I should mention that the Navy has somehow procured a trade agreement with Oceania for a lifetime supply of the very same coffee which George Winston drank in the book '1984'), and some as significant as having to traverse an obstacle course more challenging than a Marine boot camp in order to get from say the engine room to the bathroom, or 'head'.  The first leg of the course involves navigating around machinery and scalding hot pipes all cleverly positioned to trip you up or crack your skull open and burn you in such a way that you are disfigured for life.  Most of the pipes and valves were added 'after the fact' so to speak by a sadistic madman.  Having survived the first leg of the journey with only minor injuries the contestant is then faced with a battle of wits on the second leg wherein he must find an open route to his destination avoiding all passageways that have been 'secured' for 'field-day'.  The final leg of his journey is a contest of pure luck in which he must find the one 'head' which is actually working and has toilet paper in it as well.  Sounds pretty simple no?

Of course, there are some advantages as well (My wife made me put this part in), like job security: it is very difficult to get one's self fired in the Navy, and regular pay: we get paid twice a month whether we need it or not.  There are financial benefits too; like free room and board and free medical care.  One never needs to worry about what he's going to wear that day.  One can live at work, we are even encouraged to, thus eliminating the logistical problems involved in commuting such as traffic, travel time, parking, and car maintenance costs.  Why, one could live self sufficiently on the ship without any need of privately owned transportation (thus the lack of available parking).  We have free laundry service provided you don't need anything back soon or in any particular color (working uniforms only please) and cooked meals served regularly.  Coming from a home where neither parent liked to cook or was really good at it either, I've been able to appreciate the prepared meals on board more than most people.  I constantly am hearing comments like, "If my wife ever cooks a meal like this I'm leaving her.", and I'm always saying things like, "Wow, so this is what meatloaf is supposed to taste like."  (Sorry mom.)  The only further thing a person would need to live on board ship is a full frontal lobotomy and a bottle of Tums. The Navy base almost always has a theater (third run movies) and a gym and there are usually plenty of bars near the base as well so there is always something to do.  Here is the clincher though kiddies, when the ship is at sea which is most of the time and your trapped there with all these other people who have nothing to do with the little spare time they have just like you (except maybe get some sleep), the ship plays first run movies free every night on the ships TV system.  You're about to run out and enlist, aren't you?  Well please wait at least until I've finished my story, or started it even.

 

Chapter 2

 

The Arrival

 

It has been suggested that all the world is a stage and if that is true than our little corner of it would look something like this.  Lots of gray and white blocks and tubes and pieces of ventilation ducts interwoven into a conglomeration of metal and fiberglass all with one specific purpose in mind, by aliens who have never seen a human being or heard of ergonomics.  The end result being a functioning machine that is expensive to run, produces nothing tangible, and requires many biological units to service it continually.  It is referred to as a Naval Vessel.  The date is summer, 1989.

Approaching the set is a young man with his last name, Pressure, stenciled across his shirt (names have been changed to protect the innocent).  Stenciling is one of the arts and crafts he learned in Boot Camp.  He is still somewhat unaware of what he has gotten himself into.  As he crosses the brow leading to the fantail of the ship he crosses to his destiny.  It looks as if you can cross both ways on the gang plank but that is really just an illusion, because when a man finally leaves by this brow he is not the same man who crossed it in the beginning.  Many have sworn they would not be changed but then swearing is very common in the military.

"Request permission to come aboard."

He is waved on.  Several people are spread about the fantail doing various jobs, chipping paint, carrying things.

"Hey, I'm new here; is there somewhere I need to go to check in?"

"Yea, what are you?"

Possible answers run through his mind, "I'm a human being”, "A Homo Sapien male", “A Renaissance man”, “You’re worst nightmare.”

"I'm a nuc, machinist mate."

Somehow this has attracted the attention of two young men nearby who are carrying some pieces of metal.

"Welcome aboard shipmate, welcome to hell." one of them says with a cruel grin on his grimy face.  Our man gets a slight chill and on impulse checks over his shoulder to see if Rod Serling is there.  Before long someone arrives to escort him to training division, his new home so to speak.

"Why don't you go ahead and leave your stuff here for now.  They uhh...the Master at Arms will have to try and find you a place to sleep.  Things are pretty crowded around here so you will probably end up hot racking."

"OK.  What's hot racking?"

"Well that’s where you sleep in any rack you can find with no one in it, basically, like if they're on leave or something.  You'll just have to live out of your pack for a while."

No problem, he thought, I've been doing that for the last two months anyway.  Fortunately he had packed all his stuff into a backpack, opting not to use the 'sea bag' so generously provided to him by the Navy.  A sea bag by the way is a big bag with a handle on one side and a hole at one end.  It is so ingeniously designed that in order to get anything out of it one must first remove everything else in it.  Rumor has it the sea bag was designed by the same person who invented the catsup bottle.

The next stop was the Personnel Office where he would be checking in.  At this point he was handed a piece of paper and asked to fill it out.

"Just right down the names of all the cities you've been in and the dates from the time you left your last command to here," said the personnelman.

He looked back at the personnelman and said, "Excuse me, there are only six lines here for me to write in."

"Yea, so?" the personnelman replied.

"I think I'm going to need some more sheets."

His last command had been in up-state New York.  At that time the Navy gave him travel and relocation leave, in addition to the regular leave he requested.  So he drove to Ohio with a friend, and then flew to Europe for a two week tour by train.  He then drove to LA and visited with relatives and the went to San Diego, home of his new duty station.  He explained this to the personnelman’s superior who seemed very displeased.  He was clearly annoyed that he had gone to more than six cities and felt that this should be a violation of some regulation, yet he could not think of any that applied.  Still, a form would have to be filled out.  Forms were the foundation of a strong military, and he was not about to change his form just for some punk. 

"Well, just fill in the major cities, and we'll need to have you fill out this paper as well describing any unusual contacts you may have had with foreigners."

This too was going to take some time because many of the foreigners he had met seemed unusual, and in many cases he hadn’t bothered to find out their names.  In fact the more unusual the contact was the less likely he was to find out their names.

 

Impromptu Rendition of Said Form

 

Armed Forces Leave Orders – English

Feuille de Conge des Forces Armes – French

Guia de Licenca das Forcas Armadas – Portuguese

Foglio di Licenza delle Forze Armate – Italian

Militarischer Urlaubsschein – German

 

NOTE TO SELF: Finish later…..

 

 

Finally he was released and taken to Training Division.  As he looked around the training division (T-Div) classroom he saw several others sitting here and there on the floor or in chairs, an assortment of young men engaged in studying or discussions but all of them had two things in common.  They all had short hair and wore the same cloths.  Having been left on his own momentarily he decided to find out a little about his environment.  The T-Div classroom was smaller than his bedroom back home had been.  One corner was sectioned off by a thin metal wall to produce on office.  As with everywhere else in the ship, the walls were gray steel and the floor was white tile.  “Just how does one go about breaking the ice here?” he pondered, considering that sailors are often cynical bastards.  "Hey dude nice bell bottoms," would probably not produce the desired response.  In the Navy conversations about clothes are generally not very entertaining or productive.  For example, "Hey dude nice shirt, I just happen to be wearing one exactly like it," or, "Where did you get those pants?"  "Same place you did dork, what do you think?"  See what I mean?  As a matter of fact, the few conversations which do occur concerning clothes fall into one of two categories.  The sarcastic comment, i.e.. "Nice hat, did you get a free soup spoon with that?" or " What's that bib thing hanging off your collar, shouldn't it be in the front so you can wipe your face?"  And then there is the critical comment usually made by a superior, i.e.: "You need to iron that shirt son," or "You're unsat sailor, one of your 47 buttons is undone."  Buttons and bibs are very important to the Navy's mission.  But that also is a story for another time.  In any case he was rescued from his dilemma by an out going individual who introduced himself as Bob, and others introduced as “Spunky” Bob.

"Hi how ya doin my name's Bob."

"Hi."

"Hey man, are you new here?"

"Yea."

"Hey are you a mechanic?"

"Yea."

"Wow, cool dude, I'm a mechanic too..."

And so he had made his first friend.  Maybe things wouldn't be so bad after all.  Only a few minutes on board and he’d already made a friend.

Later that same night he lay curled up in someone else's bunk which Spunky Bob had said would be open for a few days, with headphones on and a towel wrapped around his face in hopes of getting a little sleep.  As people walked by shouting and slamming doors and turning on lights and a TV blared in the background he reflected on the day's events oblivious to everything around him.  He had long ago become accustomed to sleeping like this from back in his training days.  But this was going to be a new challenge.  This rack was eight inches off the deck and bordered a high traffic passage way, or “p-way”.  As a result, every few seconds a boot would hit the ground not much more than a foot from his head.  Still, sleep came.

 

At this point I should be moving on with the story, chronologically speaking, but I have a compulsion to embellish.  I have this obsessive tendency which compels my to keep fidgeting with something until it is perfect.  None of this “mostly done” slash 80% rule for me!  I prefer to maximize my inefficiency by focusing on that last 20% thank you very much.  Ahh, but now you see what I’ve done?  I’ve embellished on the compulsion which was not my intent.  In this case the word “embellish” was supposed to refer back to the subject of the sentence which was the “story” and not the “compulsion”.  …what was I going to write about…oh, yeah, hear we go…

Mark had been given a date, upon which he was supposed to report to his new “Command”.  A “Command” is anywhere that some big shot college graduated non-enlisted naval career type was in charge of several less fortunate beings.  In the military, a dead rat could be a Command provided it could get funding and at least one officer to supervise it.  In this case the Command was the USS Truxtun which happened to be located on a pier in a shipyard on a Navy Base in San Diego.  Mark had been in San Diego before.  Mark had been in San Diego for several days prior to his report date.  He had even visited the Navy Base and seen the Command.  He had thought about visiting the Command, but that seemed to much like “Volunteering”.  “Volunteering” is what got him into this mess in the first place.  Instead he had inquired of the Pier Sentry, who informed him that the USS Truxtun would be leaving on a certain date which happened to coincide with his report date.  Mark, being junior college educated immediately recognized this as an opportunity.

            Instead of reporting to his new Command on the morning of his report date, he is reported to have reported to the beach on Coronado.  From where he was able to watch the USS Truxtun as it navigated the ‘shwep channel’ (I have no idea what that means) on its way out of San Diego harbor.  He then went to the Navy Base and attempted to report to his Command which, unfortunately, had just left for two weeks.  Drat, and double drat!   His fate was now in the hands of fortune.  To report to no one would be the military equivalent of a crime, so he reported to the base Command instead.  It was then up to the base command to decide what to do with him until the Truxtun returned.

            “Oh please, oh please, oh please, tell me to come back in two weeks?”  he thought.  No such luck Buckwheat.   Every large Command is used to handling strays.  There are usually a variety of small jobs that are performed entirely by strays.  In this case, one such job was Prisoner Escort.  Every large Command is used to putting people in jail.  In the navy they call it the “brig”.  Sailors who have been bad (i.e. failing to report to your new Command on the report date, or murdering your mother) are put in the brig.  Periodically these sailors must be escorted to various offices for the purpose of filling out various bits of paperwork.  Forms are, after all, vital to the function of the military and who better to fill them out than useless prisoners.  As a result personnel were needed to escort them around.

            “I’m Chief Petty Officer Schmedlap and I’ll be conducting the Prison Escort indoctrination.  The purpose of this indoctrination is to promulgate the rules and requirements necessary to familiarize you with the tools and techniques necessary to execute your duties as a Prisoner Escort.  Any questions…”

            “Yes, I have a question.”

            “…will be answered during the afore mentioned promulgation.  Any questions?”  This was an IQ test.

            “Will we get to carry guns?”  asked Seaman Nickerbocker.

            “Right, Seaman Nickerbocker please report to the mess hall, we appear to have more Prisoner escort candidates then we need.  Anyone else?”  Mark kept his mouth shut because he knew that with the completion of Prisoner Escort training he would surely be giving a neat little laminated ID card saying that Mark was qualified to be a Prisoner Escort, and that would be cool.  It might even impress women.

            “Good, then here we go.  Section one of the syllabus you’ve been handed…  I see you don’t have any syllabi… “  The Chief Petty Officer disappears for twenty minutes in which time half the class, including Mark, has fallen asleep.  Falling asleep is an important, although clandestine, skill in the Navy.  Then he returns.

            “It appears that you are not required to have a syllabus for prisoner escort qualification so we’ll continue.  Section one of the syllabus is entitled Duties and Responsibilities of the Prisoner Escort.  The duties of the Prisoner Escort are to escort prisoners between locations without losing them.  You are responsible for not losing them.  If you lose a prisoner you will be put in the brig.  Blah blah blah...yada yada yada…”

            “All work and no play makes Mark a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Mark a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Mark a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Mark a dull boy.”  All work and no play makes Mark a dull boy.

            ”All work and no play makes Mark a dull boy.  All work and no play makes Mark a dull boy.”

            Sorry about that.  I’m going to digress for a moment and say that if you’ve never seen the movie “The Shining” then you need to get out more.  Get some culture.  There’s a reason why classics are classics.  At the risk of being pretentious, I have included a list of culture reference material in the back of this book for your edification.

The Chief goes on to explain how to search prisoners for weapons and how to get them in a choke hold and how to pin them down and how the escorts do NOT carry any sort of weapons and how we WILL be escorting multiple large mean prisoners at once etc..   Mark starts to think about this and the fact that he is a very unimposing 145lbs and concludes that he has not a snowballs chance in hell of stopping any prisoner from running away or badly maiming him for that matter.  And how he would then be sent to the brig and escorted around the base to fill out forms.  Suddenly the Prisoner Escort ID card doesn’t seem so cool.

            However, after having been given the neat little laminated ID card and put to work escorting prisoners, things turn out to OK.  The prisoners don’t seem inclined to become fugitives or to maim anyone.  In fact, most of Mark’s time is spent WAITING to escort prisoners.  The days, pass slowly. 

            Then one day a familiar face appears in the temporary barracks.  It is the face of one Greg Pits whom Mark knows from previous training Commands. 

            “Greg!  How’s it goin’”

            “Hey hey, Markus Groseth.” replies Greg.  They shake hands in multiple formats.  Greg is a pleasant easy going guy, married, black, and semi religious, involving something resembling Christianity, but is not quite.  He is also a nuc machinist mate like Mark.  “How long have you been here?”

            “Oh, about a week and a half.  I’m waiting for my ship to get back in.  Its supposed to be back in a couple of days”

            “What, are you on the Truxtun?”

            “Yea” Mark replies, laughing at the coincidence.

            “So am I!” Greg replies enthusiastically.  “Have you seen it yet?”

            “Not really.  I saw it at the pier but I haven’t been on it.”

            So it was that when the Truxtun did return several days later, Mark did not board her alone.  He and Greg both reported at the same time, having driven over to the pier parking in Mark’s car.  That piece of #@()$* car, that I won’t talk about here.

           

            OK, I will.  The car was an Alpha Romeo Spider (roadster) which is in itself bad.  The only good thing about it was that it looked like the Fiat 124 Sport Spider, which are both convertibles.  The car came from upstate New York.  That’s where I had my nuc-u-ler prototype training, in beautiful sunny Saratoga Springs.  I wrote a song about it (the place not the piece of #@()$* car).  After prototype training and the two week train trip through Europe I drove from Ohio to San Diego.  My brother flew out from LA and drove back with me.  ROAD TRIP!  We almost didn’t make it.  The car had a problem where air sometimes got in the fuel line once the tank got down to a certain level.  It took 2 years to figure out that this was the problem, but certain things the salesman said lead me to believe that he knew this when he sold it to me.  Which just goes to show that used car salesman really are shmucks.  But then you probably knew that.  Any good lawyer joke that you know, you could also just insert “used car salesman”.

           

 

 

Chapter 3

 

Training Division

 

"Welcome to Indoc."

These strange words startle him from his sleep.  He is sitting in this uncomfortable little chair attached to a table.  The room is antiseptically clean, much like most other rooms on the ship.  Like all other rooms on the ship this one is a “space”.  Technically, any area of a ship that is not a wall, floor or ceiling, is a “space”.  And every “space” that is at least partially partitioned off from other “spaces” has a “name”.  This space is named “The Forward Mess Decks”.

"I'm the Master at Arms (MAA)," the speaker says, "and I'm the guy you'll be seeing if you get into any trouble.  I'm going to give you your mandatory rights and responsibilities lecture."

At this point he unfolds several pieces of paper which turn out to be visual aids.  This will look very good on his Lecture Critique form which he himself will fill out later on.  Holding up a sheet of paper with a single word written on it, 'None', he begins again.

"These are your rights, you have no rights.  You signed them away when you enlisted, understand?"

Mark raises his hand.  It is ignored.

Then holding up the other pieces of paper he reveals not just one sheet but a whole chain of connected sheets that stretched to the floor and are covered with fine print.

"These are your responsibilities, basically you are responsible for anything we say you are.  Ignorance is no excuse.  Any questions?"  Ignoring the hands and scattered objections, "I thought not.  Thank you very much for your time and attention.  Have a Navy day."

“Just what is a navy day?” Mark queries silently.

This is his first encounter with the neo-nazi MAA and his regime of thought police, but it will not be his last.  The rest of the three day indoctrination consists of useless information and demonstrations on mundane matters like how to get toilet paper and cleaning gear when needed.

 

It turns out that in spite of what the MAA said we did have rights in the military same as everywhere else.  There was just fewer of them, and they could be overruled by people much higher up in the chain-o-command. 

 

Mark first runs into Paul at indoctrination (referred to as I-Division) and they hit it off pretty well.  They both like the same kinds of music, alternative rock; which is still a new thing at this time.  They are both pretty easy going and very funny (some of the funniest people I know).  And they both hate the Navy.  So far, so good.  But there is something else, like an expectation that life should have a certain level of mirth to it.  And they share the feeling that life in the Navy could be a lot better.

“So what do you think of all this” Mark says.

“Holy cow, is that guy for real?” responds Ralph.  “I bet he makes his wife and kids stand at attention every night before dinner.  And he probably listens to Barry Manalo.”  snicker.

Paul is always saying “holy cow”.    Greg is at indoc to but he very rarely says anything funny.  Indoc goes on for several days.  There is lecturing and a lot of pretending to pay attention.  The I-Division attendees are taking in far more than the rules and regs.  The are acclimatizing to life in a steal can.  They are adjusting to black and white lives after living in color.  I know it sounds poetic but is really more literal than you might think.  Everything on the set is heavily and repeatedly painted in one of two colors, those being white, or various shades or grey.  One of the shades of gray is called blue, but the validity of that label is arguable.  Clothes are also white, blue, or gray.  Some of the people begin to turn gray.

After a few days of this the I-Division attendees are all dispersed to their perspective parent divisions.  For Mark, Paul, and Greg, this means a move to Training Division.

 

Now Paul, in this story plays the part of the protagonist’s companion.  From time to time this character is replaced by a different character.  This is because people came and went a lot in the Navy.  Be that as-it-may, the protagonist and his companion always shared some basic characteristics that remain constant throughout the story.  Among those characteristics was a touch of idealism, and a desire to exercise free will, and for that reason alone it was inevitable that they would not get along well in the Navy.  He who wishes to rule his own spirit is not likely to have someone rule it for him.  In the Navy it is assumed that everyone needs somebody to "rule it for him". 

Allow me to elucidate a little just so we understand each other on this free will thing.  If you were to ask the average American if he/she has freedom, the reply would almost undoubtedly be an enthusiastic "Yea, sure, I guess so."  After all, everyone in America is free right?  Slavery no longer exists here and indentured servitude is illegal.  Furthermore any contract which limits ones freedom is unconstitutional.  What a country!  But still, most everyone seems to over look a significant portion of society which is exempt from constitutional protection and laws of conscience.  No it's not the blacks or the Hispanics or the Asians, it's our own military, the people whom we all support with our tax monies.  So, when a sailor leaves his family and goes to sea for eight months in the back of his mind is the knowledge that all free Americans are helping to send him to this fate.  Every time he is being repressed he knows that the good old US of A is behind this 100%, in a naive sort of way, and the irony is that the soldier or sailor is looked upon as a patriot.  I don't feel much like a patriot myself, I feel like moving to Australia.  Its not enough to have free will, I want the freedom to exercise it.

Now I realize that freedom and free will are two different things.  They are both very illusive and have four letters in common but they also have some differences which I will not elucidate, except to say that free will implies the ability to make choices while freedom merely implies the existence of choices (OK I lied).  Here is an extreme example.  A drug addict is exercising his freedom by taking drugs, but whether or not he is in control determines how much free will he has in the matter.  Most things in life are like this to some degree.  In the old days soldiers were shot for exercising free will.  You know what I'm saying?  But I've gotten off track here, which is tremendously unusual for me.  Paul and Mark agreed early on that they were going to have to exercise their free will and get the hell out of Dodge so-to-speak as soon as was possible.  The problem being that they also had no desire to be shot or court marshaled or anything nasty like that.  This left them with a perplexing dilemma to resolve.  They had also noticed that the more you wanted to get out the harder they tried to keep you in.  'They' being the perfidious bastards in charge :-P.

 

"Now what sense does that make?"  Mark asks as he reluctantly shovels another fork full of meat surprise into his mouth.  "Any rational person or organizational entity would try to get rid of the malcontents and keep those who have a warm fuzzy for the job in question in order to promote peace, tranquility and productivity."  he continues.

"Yea, but then we're in the Navy."  Paul responds thoughtfully as he stirs his thrice thawed and reheated beans.

"Oh yea."  Mark replies still chewing the last piece of meat he has put in his mouth.  Then a thought occurs to him.  'We can't be the only persons to have ever pondered this disparity.  Surely others have come up with answers to these incongruities of life, liberty and happiness in the navy.'  He looks around at the others sitting at the table and realizes he has another problem.  Because for many of his associates a deep thought was/is something like "I wonder if the Red Sox will win the pennant this year." 

 

Now some of my associates reading this might be offended so let me just say that I worked with some very smart individuals, but many of them just found it easier not to think about things when they were off duty.  And yes I agree it is easier but consider these familiar words of wisdom my peers.  He who does not learn from mistakes is likely to repeat them.  He who does not even know that mistakes are being made is destined to repeat them, or have them repeated on him as the case may be, and ignorance may be bliss but it misses out on a lot of good stuff.  Anyway, I’ve often wondered if there was any real difference between choosing not to think not being able to.

 

"Paul" Mark says, spitting out the piece of gristle he's been chewing.  "Let us go in search of the wisest mechanic and poseth our dilemma unto him, so that upon hearing he mayeth impart wisdom onto us."

"Huh?" says Paul.

"I said lets go ask someone who looks like they might have some answers."

"Oh, OK," says Paul, "but where will find this personage of superior wisdom?  Should I go to the local church, or a university maybe?  Anywhere but here."

"Aye, Don't be so cynical." Mark replies.  "Wisdom comes from experience too and a superior mechanic is likely to have experienced quite a lot."

"OK, but if he is very senior, I would be kind of reluctant to rely on his wisdom, solely because he was still in the navy."

"Thou makest an excellent point young Sir Paul.  Let us then look for a mechanic of moderate seniority who appears to be both wise and trustworthy."

"Dude, are you feeling OK?" Paul replies.

"Yea, fine, why?" Mark inquires in a matter of fact tone of voice.

"Uh, so if you were this mechanic where would you be?"

"Well, running a division maybe?"

"No, they would never put someone like that in charge of a division.  They'd want a cyborg, part human part machine, able to spew NAVREGS (an acronym for Naval Regulations) in response to any question, complete with remote control unit."

"Oh, yea." Mark replies cleverly, "We'd be more likely to find him lying low somewhere.  And you know where the best place is to lie low?"

"In your bunk." They both reply.

"What we need to do then is figure out which bunk seems to be occupied the most over say, the next few days?" Paul suggests.

"Excluding the very senior persons though.  We should be careful about that, we wouldn't want 'them' to know what we were up to."

"Agreed, lets keep our eyes open and see what we can find."

 

After about a week of looking around and asking harmless questions of the more junior mechanics they were able to narrow down the search to just a few remaining bunks.  There was really no way for them to narrow it down further at that point.  They could either wait around for a few weeks and hope to find out something helpful or take a chance.  Best guess as it were.  Nucs are notoriously bad at guessing because they try to use reason in the absence of facts to reason with.  Thus the term 50/50/90.  Meaning that if there is a 50/50 chance of getting it right a Nuc will get it wrong 90% of the time.  This is just another way of stating the inherent danger in reasoning from insufficient data.  Realizing this they decided to wait just a little longer.  You're disappointed, I can tell.  Well who asked you to read my story anyway?  Hey, come back I was just kidding.

Besides they had plenty to keep them busy.  They were done with I-division and back in Training division where they had been given these huge syllabi like books detailing the knowledge requirements and hands on training requirements they would have to complete before going to Mechanical division pending a brief two month stop over in Supply division (you following all that?).

 

"You have twelve weeks to complete this.  You will comply." A voice says to them while handing them their qualification books, in a rhythmic monotone kind of speech which made it impossible to distinguish mere syllables from words.  (please note that this was written pre Voyager)

"Sure, thanks man." They reply cheerily.

The Training Petty Officer (TPO) seemed not to hear them as he returns to his ancient computer terminal and seemingly endless stack of paperwork.

"Let's check this baby out." Mark says flipping through the pages.

"Reminds me of my prototype qual card.  It should be a lot easier the second time no?  It better be a lot easier this time because I'm not putting in any twelve hour days here.  Know what I mean?"

"I hear that, I hear sun and fun a-calling.  We better see what kinds of studying aids we can scare up.  I'll bet Spunky Bob here could get us some." Mark replies.  Then turning in Bob's direction, "Hey Bob, like what's the deal on this qualification thing?"

"Dudes, you need to get a hold of some primers.  Otherwise you'll be digging through all those huge voluminous Reactor Plant Manuals and that would totally take forever, know what I mean?  Then just go hang out on the messdecks and study until you see some Nuc walk by and then you say, "Hey dude, sign my qual card." like.  And then you tell him what you know and then he'll tell you what he knows and sign your card.  And before you know it it's time to go hit the beach.  Hey, I’ll tell you what though, enjoy it while you can man because T-div is the most cake division you'll see on this ship."

 

They were in beautiful San Diego at the time and Mark had his convertible.  The beach was a mere 20 min drive from the ship.  It was a pretty choice situation.  Downtown was 10 min away, Mark's parents were three hours north which is just close enough to visit on holidays.  Tijuana was 15 min to the south and all they had to do was...

 

"Get qualified nub!"

The voice has startled Mark from his day dreaming.  It is not a kind compassionate voice either.  Rather it is laced with disdain and hostility.  The person turns and leaves.  Turning to Ralph, Mark says, "Who was that?"

"That's the Hall Monitor I believe." Paul replies.

"Don't sweat it man," Spunky Bob interjects.  "There's a lot of people like that around here."

What is it that makes them that way Mark wonders.  There seems to be something not quite normal about some of the people he’s run into here. It just isn’t logical to assume that so many...hmm, how to put this nicely...unpleasant persons could have all been attracted here by chance.

"Are either of you two guys planning to reenlist?"

Mark is startled from his contemplation by the voice of Spunky Bob.  On hearing the 'R' word spoken, Mark and Paul immediately jump from our chairs and begin beating Spunky Bob about the head and body.

"OK, OK I take it back," after a slight pause, "I guess that means no then?  I'm glad to hear it.  I knew you guys were OK.  After a while you can tell who the lifers are.”

“What are lifers?” Mark asks.

“They’re people who never get out.  They keep re-enlisting.  Hey, you guys should be careful though.  If someone you don’t know starts asking you about re-enlisting they might be on the Retention Team (no joke).  You don’t want to mess with them.  Hey I gotta go.  Good luck on your quals man."  At that Spunky Bob heads out to go about his work for the day.  As he leaves Mark realizes that a certain amount of trust has begun to take root among the three of them.   It is good to have a familiar face around, makes it more like home.

"What are you waiting for?"  It is the mechanical voice again coming from a head that has jutted out from behind the T-div office door which is now slightly ajar.  "Do not delay further, resistance is useless, start getting qualified nubs," and then the head disappears.  A chill runs down Mark’s back as the door closes again.

 

I believe I should stop for a minute to describe some of the things I've mentioned so far, such as bunks and petty officers and other things to come, and I believe I will start with 'nub'.  The word nub is not exclusive to the Navy but has a significant meaning here which is only applicable to the Navy.  The word comes from the Old English phrase “non-useful body”, and in the Naval nuclear power genre has come to mean a trainee not yet qualified as a nuclear operator.  However the meaning changes with geographic location.  For example, once a trainee, or nub, graduates from a nuclear prototype (after about two years of training) he gains the title Nuclear Operator (i.e. Nuc).  Once he reports to his ship, though, he is disrespectfully referred to as a 'nub' again until he is qualified to actually stand all his required watches.  And finally, as if this weren't confusing enough already, anyone senior to him with an ego will still refer to him as a nub regardless of how qualified he might be.  Glad to have cleared that up for you.

A bunk is a rectangular coffin like cubicle containing a three inch thick mattress pad and a light.  The side opening can be closed off by a curtain making a space about 6 1/2 feet long, 2 1/2 feet wide and 2 feet tall.  Under the mattress is a six inch deep storage compartment, same length and width as the rest of the cubicle.  To get into the storage area one must life up the bottom of the bunk and the mattress.  Each of these cubicles is stacked three high, end to end and back to back.  We call them pits, and everyone from recruit to petty office first class lives in one.  In other words everyone who wears a working blue uniform on the ship.  After five years in the Navy (at the point of this writing) I’m a petty officer second class, which to me is not a very impressive title.  Not only am I petty, I’m second class.  Now in the army I'd have been a sergeant which sounds much better.  That's all right though because soon I'll be a civilian first class and that is the sweetest sounding title I could imagine.  I'm also a machinist mate.  Which means next to nothing really since I can barely tell a lathe from a drill press.  Somewhere way back in my impressive naval career I was sent’ along with all the other machinist mate Nucs, to machinist mate school for a few weeks where they taught us very complicated stuff like how to tell a straight slot screw driver from a pipe wrench for instance.  One of the few things I still remember from that school is the standard Navy requirements for a pipe.  The outside diameter must be larger than the inside diameter.  And it must have two holes, one at either end and connecting in the middle.  If it has more than two holes it is defective, unless it is a ‘T’ connector.  We also learned the difference between a Philips screwdriver and a Reed and Prince, which you will learn later.  Never mind the fact that no one has made a “Reed and Prince” screwdriver since the depression.  We also learned some important safety tips like, don’t go into an area, or “space,” filled with freon and then light up a cigarette and hang out.  The Navy has to keep things fairly simple, you see, because the recruiters are not very choosy (well, not 1986 anyway) and will let just about anyone into the Navy.  This is not like applying to McDonald’s where they actually screen their applicants.

Billy Bob, "Yup that's right, I's a dirt farmer fum Iowa, an I wanna be wanna dem meckenics."

Recruiter, "You're just the man we've been looking Billy Bob, I think you'll do just fine.  Just sign this bestiality waver and we'll have you on your way."

Wavers are very big with recruiters.  I had to sign a waver because I had 27 parking tickets.  You will find much of Americas finest here in the Navy. 

Anyway, I have some fond memories of those early days.  Marching around in our white uniforms like a platoon of Good Humor ice-cream men in training.  Being rained on everyday day at exactly 4:00pm just as school was letting out.  This is back when I was in Orlando, Florida getting educated (pronounced ejumacated), in the land of Shamoo the killer whale and Candoo, the only baby whale to be born in captivity, not to mention the Truxtun's alma matter.  That's where I learned that in the Navy anyone can be an instructor, just ask them.  And that is when I learned the proper way to take No-Doz.  I will explain it for you, because just popping down a couple No-Doz can be quite a shock to the system. 

1.      One should start with a cup of coffee.

2.      Half an hour later take a No-Doz and an aspirin. 

3.      Twenty minutes later take a second No-Doz. 

4.      Then all you have to do is drink a cup of coffee about once an hour after that.

5.      After about 3 or 4 hours you may need more No-Doz and aspirin. 

This method is guaranteed to work, that is unless you've got one of these highly trained Navy instructors explaining the difference between a screwdriver and a pipe wrench and then you're doomed.  Doomed I tell you!

"Fireman Pressure (that was me), go stand at the back of the room." the instructor would say.  I don’t know why he called me fireman.  They called us all “Fireman” or “Seaman” until we could readily differentiate between a screwdriver and a pipe wrench.

I had this one instructor who had to be the most boring man in the world.  In a more ideal world he would have taken a job giving lectures to insomniacs.  He would have been rich beyond my wildest dreams, but instead he had chosen to torment young sailors.  Every day he would walk into the classroom, turn to the class and say, "This should be interesting" just before explaining the subtle differences between a Phillips and a Reed and Prince screwdriver (which by the way is 15 degrees).  15 also happens to be the number of seconds between the time he delivering his opening statement until my head colliding with the hard Formica desk.  Even after my carefully planned consumption of coffee, No-Doz and aspirin

I was unable to achieve anything more than a semiconscious ethereal state.  And who could blame me really, besides the instructor? Certainly not my classmates since they were all unconscious too.  By no stretch of the imagination could this lecture have been interesting.  He was not merely exaggerating or fibbing.  He was telling outrageous lies.   There is nothing interesting about screwdrivers.  So why am I going on about it you may ask?  I may not have a good answer.  I used to try and imagine what this guy’s home life must be like...everything starts to grow hazy and then wavers a  little as we fade into an antiseptically clean front room of a perfectly ordinary house.  In the adjoining kitchen is a woman, Mrs. Smith, who is not actually pretty and then again, not really homely either.  In fact she is extremely unnoteworthy.  Two nondescript children sit watching the television in a ‘seen but not heard’ sort of way.  Mr. Smith, US Navy instructor extraordinaire, enters.

"I'm home dear." he says to his wife who is only twelve feet away setting the table and well aware that he is indeed entered the home.

"How was your day dear?" she asks in a most unenthusiastic manner.

"Oh, it was very interesting.  I gave three lectures on blah blah blah blah..."

Meanwhile both children have gone into REM sleep and his wife is thinking, 'maybe I could arrange the dry goods alphabetically over here and then stack all the canned goods by size in that cupboard over there and...' Over in the next room one of the children has started to choke on some drool.

"...blah, blah blah blah blah?" Mr. Smith asked.

"Uh, what was that again dear?" Mrs. Smith replied with a slight hint of trembling and trepidation in her voice.

"If you'd been paying attention you would know.  Will!  Jenny!  Wake up!  You all know the rules, now go stand at the back of the room until I'm done..."

And finally I must mention that I did not make up the Retention Team for this story.  (nice seg-way back to the plot, no?)  The Truxton had a team of enlisted crew who’s job it was to go around getting other enlisted crew to re-enlist.  I tell you more about that later.

 

Before heading up to the mess decks to do some studying, Mark and Paul grab a couple volumes of the Reactor Plant Manual (RPMs) and/or Steam Plant Manual (SPMs) from the book shelf.  The shelf contains dozens of them.  They are each black, plastic hardbound with hinges, and about three inches thick.  They lumber up the ladder and forward through a long passageway periodically bisected by water-tight hatches.  Eventually the P-way opens up into a large room full of metal tables.  The tables and chairs are all welded in place.   There are a few other T-Div personnel there scattered about, intently studying their training materials.  The two take their place at an unoccupied table and begin to study quietly.

“What are you #*)$ing Nucs doing here?”  asks one of the topsider mess cranks rhetorically in a hostile voice.

 

Mess cranks are people who ‘volunteer’ to work on the mess decks but who are not Mess Specialists or MSes.  Ships never have enough MSes because it’s a lousy job. As a result, most of the people working on the mess decks are on loan from some other division.  All enlisted people get to work on the mess decks periodically.  It’s like Jury Duty.  So mostly the MSes cook and prepare the food and the cranks serve and clean up.

 

.  “Get out-a here the mess decks are closed.”  Pause.  The Nucs look at him but no one leaves.  “Why don’t you go and study down in your T-Div class room?” he asks non-rhetorically with a hint of resentment.

“There aren’t any tables or desks in T-Div.” Mark replies.

“Well that’s f#*)%#up but you’ll have to leave.  I’m going to go get the chief.”  He is referring to the Mess (MS) Chief.   Most divisions have their own chief.

Finally one of the more senior T-Div Nucs speaks up.  “Piss off, we’re allowed to study here up to 15 minutes before meal time” he says with little enthusiasm and a bit of disdain.

The mess crank storms off and the senior T-Div guy mutters out loud, “F#*)@ing topsider!”

Mark and Paul exchange glances as if to say “what was that about?”

“What’s a topsider?” Mark asks Paul quietly.

“Dude, its anyone who’s not a Nuc” replies Paul.

“So it’s one of us vs. them kind of things” Mark says.

A few minutes later the MS guy is back with the Mess Chief who talks broken English with a Filipino accent.  “You can not stay here.  Mess decks off limit.  You have to go” he says.

The senior T-Div guy is not the least bit intimidated by this chief.  He gets up and says, “We don’t have to [BEEP]ing go anywhere.”

“If you don’t leave, I’m going to report you.  I’ll write you up.” says the chief.

“Go ahead and report me!  The engineer says we can be here and you can’t make us leave.”

“These are not the engineer’s mess decks.”

As the two argue the guy at the table with the senior T-Div guy gets up and goes to a phone.  A couple minutes later the TPO arrives.  He approaches the chief and in a slightly higher pitch than normal monotone says, “You will not interfere with training division.  Training division personnel are authorized to use these premises by order of the Chief Engineer.”

As if on cue the Engineer emerges from the forward engine room, called ‘One Plant’, which empties out right onto the mess desks.  The Engineer is a big man, moderately overweight.  It is difficult to determine where his chin ends and his neck begins.  In general he is clumsy looking with only wisps of hair to cover his scalp.  His most distinguishing characteristic is that all of his facial features, his eyes and nose and mouth, are all grouped together in the center of his face as if they had gotten together there for a meeting or something and then just decided they liked it better that way.  After briefly sizing up the situation he goes totally ballistic on the chief.  We’re talking behavior unbecoming an officer in the US Navy.  The word spaz comes to mind.  At some point in the tirade he decides that bludgeoning the chief with mere words is not sufficient.  The engineer struggles unsuccessfully to pull up one of the welded tables or chairs.  His face is completely red and he unable to do anything but curse at this point.  While he is still struggling with the chair a couple of medical corpsmen arrive.  The food service chief has surreptitiously left the scene.  One of the corpsmen give the engineer an injection and he calms down.

“Holy shit!” replies Paul, quietly.

Mark is amazed, amused, terrified, and mortified all at once.  “We work for that guy!” Mark says incredulously.

“Do you realize that we will have to do our final qual board with that guy before we can get out of T-Div?”

They both laugh nervously.

 

The nuc-u-lar navy is big on oral examinations.  Oral examinations are not nearly as funny as they sound.  Rather than take a standardized written test, a candidate will have to answer questions asked by an examiner or group there-of.  The examiner or examiners constitute a board.  The examiners are usually higher ranking experts who can ask you just about anything they want.  The examinee is provided with a chalk board or note pad on which to draw diagrams or equations.

 

Fade out, and then back in.  Same scene with some slight variations.  It could be a day or a week later.  Mark and Paul are studying, and studying.  It is early afternoon and it is warm because they are in San Diego and it is summer.  Everyone is feeling a little drowsy.  The silence is broken suddenly by the appearance of a group of very enthusiastic pep-squad-esque group of enlisted men who are very definitely NOT minding their own business.  They all have Retention Team badges on and they are carrying a number of color broachers and forms.  They come to the first table and surround a new nub who was studying.

“Hey man, how are ya doing?” they ask.

“Uh, fine, I guess” replies the nub.

Brief introductions follow.

“Have you thought about re-enlisting?”

“Well, no” says the nub sheepishly, feeling a little overwhelmed.  A color broacher is placed in front of him.

“Did you know that as a Nuc you can get a re-enlistment bonus of $12,000 dollars just by adding two years to your…”

“sentence”  This is interjected by a qualified Nuc at the next table who is doing some paper work.  His name is Roger.

“…tour?”  Several of the Retention Team glare hostilely at Roger.  Others are making “Ch-ching” sounds to emphasize the money aspect of the deal.

“That’s like getting a new car just staying two more years.  Two more years is enough time for you to make 1st class.”  More “Ch-chings”

The new nub is getting really excited.  Without even looking up from his work Roger says emphatically, “Don’t re-enlist until you’ve at least been to sea.  That’s all I ask, but do they listen to me?  Nooooo.”

One of the Retention Team is simultaneously talking into what must be a lapel mic and looking over his shoulder at Roger.  Roger gathers up his stuff, gets up and disappears back down into One Plant.  The Retention Team moves on to the nub at the next table.  Mark and Paul continue to pretend to not notice any of this.

“How about you, have you considered re-enlisting?”

The nub perks up somewhat insincerely and says, “Gee, I don’t know, do I get a free lobotomy with that?”

“That could be arranged” one of them mumbles.

“Hey, nice buttons guys!  If I re-enlist can I have one too?” the nub says, and then mutters “Dorks!”

The Retention Team is starting to get defensive.  Some of them are looking around to see if anyone else is listening, in case containment actions will be needed.  Satisfied that this is between them and the nub they continue.

“Do you have a problem with the Navy?  They Navy is the best thing that ever happened to me” states one the team, daring him to dis the navy.  This is a trap.  One of the team has a tape recorder and thumbs the record button.

“By joining the navy you guys were all probably saved from a short lived and humiliating career as a Boy Band, and the world is thankful for that.  But I have bigger plans.  Some day I’m going to be the [BEEP]ing assistant manager at McDonalds!” replays the nub, basking in the glory.

Laughs are stifled all over the mess decks.  The team looks around furtively and realizes they’ve lost.

“Now go away or I will taunt you a second time” the nub continues.

As the team retreats the call back “We’ve got your number nub.  You’ll change your tune soon enough.  You’ll see!”

The nub calls after them, “Losers!”

 

Fade out, and then back in.  Same scene with some slight variations.  It could be a day or a week later.  Mark and Paul are studying, and studying.  It is mid morning and it is not yet uncomfortably.  Out of One Plant come a nub.  It is the witty nub from the previous scene.  Mark and Paul watch as he takes a seat at the next table over.  They introduce.

“Hey, that thing with the Retention Team the other day was pretty sweet.” Paul says to the nub.

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about” says the nub, rather unemotionally.

“The other day, when you dissed on the Retention Team, that was pretty funny” Mark replies.

“I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake.  I would never be disrespectful to the Retention Team” says the nub.

At this point Mark notices that the nub has a Retention Team badge on.  He nudges Paul but Paul doesn’t notice.

“Dude!  What are you talking about.  It was just like last week…” Paul is interrupted by Mark.

“Soo, what do you think about re-enlisting?” Mark says.

“I think it’s a fine idea.  In fact I believe it is the right thing to do.  I re-enlisted” says the nub rather matter-or-factly.

“Congratulations, when did that happen?”

“I signed my re-enlistment papers yesterday.”  Then the nub turns and goes back to work.

Mark turns to look at Paul.  Both their eyes are bugging out, all four of them.  Mark is going “doo doo doo doo, doo doo doo doo” twilight zone style and jerks his thumb backward to indicate that he’s leaving.  They both relocate to different part of the mess decks, called the “forward mess deck” to get away from the nub.

“What the hell was that all about?” Mark asks.

“Man, that was spooky.  I gotta get outa this place!” Paul replies.

“I know this sounds kind of paranoid.  But I’ve seen enough TV to think that maybe we shouldn’t mess with Retention Team.  I they come by, we gotta act like we’re riding the fence.”

“How about if the Retention Team comes by we skidadle” replies Paul.

 

After a couple months on the ship Mark had finally settled in.  He had his own ‘pit’ so no more hot racking.  He had a good place to stash his guitar.  He had begun to find his way around pretty well.  It was starting to seem like a normal job.  He wasn’t yet qualified to stand any watches so duty days were a joke.  He had his car parked there on the base with a trunk full of civilian clothes and beach implements.  It was still strange to be in a strange town. Naturally there were things to do on the base but it was nice to get away from authoritarian influences for a while.  Just up the street a couple of miles was the USO (United Serviceman’s Organization).  The USO served as a kind of home away from home, run by civilians I should add.  So sometimes Mark would go there to just relax, write letters, watch TV, or play the piano.  The piano was in a separate room which worked out well for everybody.  Things were fairly copasetic, until the news came that the ship would be going out for a few days.  Neither Mark nor his friends Paul or Pits (Greg, who came on board the same day Mark did) had ever been out before on a navy ship, although they knew it was inevitable being in the navy and all.  And now the day was approaching.  They were all feeling a bit of anxiety.  Imagine if you would that next week your house or apartment was going to go floating off for a few day, and you would be trapped there until it got back.  This is how it seemed to them.  In addition to this they were wondering if they would get sea sick.  It had already been made clear to them that only sissies got sea sick.  Everyone knew that.  Surprisingly though, every time the ship went out, medical would be handing out sea sick pills left and right.  This is the kind of thing that happens when you get a whole lot of sexually maladjusted males (that includes most men in the world) together in one spot.

“I’m not sea sick, only sissies get sea sick.  What pills!  Hey lets find the new guys and see if we can get ‘em to lose their lunch.”

“Yea, yea, hu-hu, cool.”

So finally it happened…

 

The ship is a hive of activity as final preparations are made to leave port.  On the pier people are running to and fro disconnecting hoses and untying ropes.  Lines are thrown across and coiled up again and put away or left in picturesque piles neatly wound on the deck.  A gaggle of electricians mates work to disconnect the huge power cables.  The tug boats arrived and began tying up to the ship.  Within an hour or two everything is ready and a crane truck hooked up it’s cables to the gang plank.  The conductor blows his whistle and said “All aboard” (just kidding).  Over the ships P.A. the announcement is made for all visitors to leave and for all departments to take a head count.  Before leaving the XO will have a list of all people on board.  In fact the announcement even includes something about checking for stowaways.  As the XO speaks Mark and (Greg) Pits are topside, ‘O1’ level heading aft on the port side.  In civilian this means they are outside walking toward the back of the ship (away from the pointy end) on the left side.  For a brief moment Mark’s thoughts are indistinguishable from those of most of the crew as he looks down to step over some recently deposited... ‘Who would actually want to stow away on this piece of’...pigeon poo.

This is not the first time Mark has seen the ship leave. 

 

When he first arrived at the base in San Diego (or San Dog as it was called), it took several hours to find out where the ship was.  His orders said that he should report at 8 am on Friday and the Navy doesn’t take kindly to people showing up late, so Mark figured he better go in on Thursday and find the place.  By the time he got to the proper pier it was already 2 pm on Thursday.  Walking up to the pier sentry he asked, “Which of these ships is the Truxtun?”

“That would be that one right there, says ‘Truxton’ on the back.” the sentry said. 

“I’m just checking in, I’m supposed to report there tomorrow morning.  Should I be in my whites or my dungarees (working uniform)?” Mark asked.

“Probably check-in in your dress uniform.”

“Suppose they’d let me on now to have a look around?”

“Not unless you want to check-in early.  Did you say you gotta check in tomorrow morning?”

“Yea, that’s right.”

“I think this ship is pulling out in about three hours, you sure you want to check in now?” the sentry asked.

“I suppose not, but if they leave where do I go?”

“Over to beach detachment.  You passed it as you came in the main gate.  It’s across from the brig.”

“Thanks.”  Mark said.

Mark decided not to linger.  He promptly left the pier and headed for the beach on Coronado Island.  From there he sat on the sand and watched the Truxton sail into the sunset, leaving him with a warm fuzzy feeling.

Mark spent the next two weeks doing basically nothing.  He would report in the morning  and then do odd jobs around the base.  In the evenings he stayed at his cousin’s house there in town.  Do to the proximity of Beach Det. to the brig, Mark’s services were soon retained as a prisoner escort.  This was an official job requiring an ID badge and training.  No one ever bothered to question the wisdom of having Mark, who weighed in at 145lbs, escorting prisoners, unarmed.  Fortunately no prisoners needed escorting so Mark mostly read books.  And then finally it happened.  The Truxton came back, and now it was leaving again, with Mark on it.

Soon tugs were pulling the ship out into the channel, away form the pier.  Once out in the channel the ship began to move under it’s own power.  It took a couple hours to navigate through the channel and out into open water.  It was a rather scenic journey providing an excellent view of Harbor Park and the downtown area.  The trip involved crossing under a bridge early on.  This was the bridge which connected mainland San Diego to Coronado and the North Island Naval Air Station.  The bridge was designed in such a way that if it was ever bombed the center pieces would float to prevent the fleet from becoming trapped in the harbor.  What’s more, the channel was mined to prevent subs from getting in, so careful navigation was needed to get out of the harbor.

 

“How you doin Pits?” Mark asks.

“No problem.” He answers.

“You gonna get some sea sick pills?”

“Na, I don’t need no sea sick pills.  It’s all in the head man.”

So is pain Mark thinks.  “I’m feelin pretty good, I think I’m gonna be OK,” Mark says.

Shortly after that cheerful exchange the ship clears the channel and heads for the high seas.  Things begin to move around, except they don’t move.  The eyes say nothing is moving and after all seeing is believing, but the inner ear thinks differently.  Things are definitely moving; the walls, the ceiling and everything, moving in three dimensions in a chaotic fashion.  Things are rolling front to back, side to side, and up and down simultaneously.  Slowly but surely this conflict between the eyes and the equilibrium begins to work it’s magic and motion sickness begin to set in.  Lunch had gone OK, but shortly after both Mark and Pits had stopped by medical for sea sick pills (too late).  By late afternoon they have both retired to the helo deck hoping that fresh air and a view of the horizon will help (also too late).  Fortunately Mark’s sea sickness levels off at a semi-tolerable level provided their are plenty of aspirin on hand.

5 O’clock that evening:

“You wanna head back down and get some dinner?” Mark asks.

“I don’t know, I’m not feeling too well,” replies Pits.

“I think hunger is making me fell worse, maybe we would feel better if we had some food in our stomachs.”

After a slight pause, “OK, lets go get in line.”

Off they go to the chow line.  Fifteen minutes later they are within smelling distance of the food, a couple of minutes more and they will have food on their plates.  They can sit down and fill their tummies.  But that is about two minutes too long for Pits who is nearly green (which is really saying something for a black guy).  Suddenly he jumps out of line and ralfs his guts out in the nearest corner.  This really pleases the mess captain, NOT.

“You all right, you want some help?” Mark asks.

“No, I feel a little better now.   I’m going to go to bed, you go ahead and eat,” Pits says and departs for berthing.

After a good meal Mark does indeed feel better.  The next day they are less sick.  By the third day it is mostly gone, but the aspirin remains on hand.  They are fortunate that the weather has been fairly calm the whole time they are out.  Downtown San Diego is a beautiful sight at night from the harbor.  That night they head over to Horton Plaza for some drinks and a movie.  It is good to be back.

A couple of days latter while our heroes are inconspicuously sitting on the messdecks studying, and as they are attempting to comprehend the complex workings of a naval nuclear power plant, yet another strange occurrence occurs.  A line of Nucs passes by.  They are all chanting something like 'field day' and then simultaneously smacking themselves in the head with dust pans.  It is eerie.  Paul tries to flag one down for a qual-card signature but they seem almost oblivious to the pair as one by one they turn and file down into the engineroom.

"What do you suppose that was all about?" asks Paul.  “If this place gets any weirder I’m jumping over.”

"I couldn't say for sure but I've been hearing rumors about something called 'oars’ which has got everyone acting strange…er than usual.  Everyone's mood seems to be changing perceptibly.  Like there’s a little tension in the air, you know?" says Mark.

"Hmm."

"In any case, and this is the scary part, this oars thing isn't even scheduled to happen for another two months," Mark adds.  Now he’s got their attention.  “So whatever this is, its going to get worse.”

"It's never to early to start getting ready for ORSE.  Speaking of which why aren't you two down in the plant field-daying or something?" interjects a here-so-far unidentified voice which is trying to sound more threatening than it is.

At the sound of it they both turn around to see a mechanic, who looks vaguely familiar, looking at them with a grin on his face.  He appears to be pretty senior (that's something which happens to people who hang around one place for a long time) and for a second they think they might be in trouble.  But soon they suspected he is just being sarcastic.  They play along.

"We don't have our TLDs yet." Paul replies with a chuckle.

"Wish I could say the same." says the senior mechanic with a look of sincere longing.

 

TLDs by the way are little radiation monitoring devices.  All Nucs are supposed to get one as soon as they get to the ship but it takes some time for them to get around to giving them out.  We were then told to wear them on the belt at all times so that we would then know how many zoomies we received each month from the reactors.  That is provided we didn't then wear them to go get X-rays or put them in the microwave or drink any of the local water.  It is rumored among the topsiders that TLDs also have absorption characteristics which protect the wearer from some forms of radiation.  But then some topsiders still think the Navy is an adventure.  In either case you have to wear one to go down into the engineroom.  I seem to have side tracked myself again.

 

Mark begins to think that this might be the guy they are looking for and so he asks, "Can I ask you what bunk you sleep in?  I feel like I've seen you around but I can't recall where."

"You can ask." he replies in a way that says he will not answer.

Right about then the Engineer walks by waving his arms and mumbling to himself.  And by this time a couple more Nucs have filtered in and have sat down around nearby tables.  A few of the Nucs scramble off into various P-ways and everyone suddenly quiet.  At first it looks as if he will pass by without even noticing them, but he pauses suddenly in midmumble and whirls to look at them as if they have somehow betrayed their presence.

"Well what are you two waiting for?" the Engineer sneers.

 "We're uh, still in T-div sir." they return meekly.

"So what are you doing here?!  Maybe you should go report to your division officer!"  He almost turns to go and then, "Go clean something that's what you're paid for.  Don't you realize ORSE is almost here?"  He waits until they get up and start gathering their stuff.  After looking around at the others he quickly resumes his original course.

The Engineer continues on his coarse with his brows furrowed.  As he goes he barks orders and generally exhibits good flailing actions.  The sound diminishes down one passageway, levels off, and then seems to be coming back from a different direction. Mark’s mind has begun to wander (Fade to dream sequence).  The Engineer has turned into the evil Gargamel and is stomping around in the little Smurf village with a maniacal grin on his face.  Little blue Smurfs are scurrying every which way yelling "Papa Smurf, Papa Smurf!"  The scene then zooms in on Gargamel's raised foot as it is descending on a single Smurf who is desperately looking for some place to hide.  His efforts are in vain though since there is nowhere nearby where he can climb into or under to save himself.  Gargamel's foot come down with a splat.

"What are smiling about?  What's your name?  You're on my shit list sailor." the Engineer raves while waving his arms again around just before stomping off to his stateroom for some much deserved solitude.  He's had a rough day tyrannizing those uppity strong willed scumbag blueshirts and he’s looking forward to spending some time picking the fuzz from between his toes. (true story)

"Wow, what a psycho." Mark says.

"No kidding.  That's why we call him Stormin Norman, and that was a close one," replies the senior mechanic as he crawls out from under the table at which he has previously been seated.

"What is this ores thing I keep hearing about?" Paul inquires.

"Well, you see it's a big inspection/examination we have to go through about every six months or so.”

“It's the Operational Reactor Safeguards Examination,” someone else interjects.

 “A lot of overpaid, and over-weight, no loads from Washington DC come here to eat cookies and see just how well we can clean an operating nuclear power plant.  After all, if it's clean it must work OK too.  Well, I gotta go maintain a lower profile.  Remember, if you don't look for me I won't hide from you."  And with that he turns and is already leaving.

"But wait, we have some important questions we want to ask you.  Where can we find you later?" Mark asks lamely.

"When the time is right, maybe I'll find you," he replies without looking back.

 

As I have alluded to before, the primary job of any enlisted man is to clean or 'field day' as they say.  But just as a sideline the Navy also put me through two years of intensive training for the sole purpose of teaching me to operate a nuclear power plant.  It was very nice of them, really, and you too since your tax dollars helped pay the bill.  It was no picnic you understand but then I hear that nothing really worthwhile ever is.  It may not have been a picnic but it was a ‘field day’ from time to time.  I remember way back when I was a child, a field day was a trip that the whole class would go on, and would almost always get us out of school for the day so it was definitely a good thing.  We would go to the zoo or the museum and walk around in an orderly fashion, all in a line following the teacher.  Until lunch time came and then we would run in a chaotic manner all over the zoo or museum knocking down things and people and raising the average noise level by about 20 decibels.  Now, field days have become much dreaded events involving many hours of cleaning, any time of day or night, and for as long as is deemed necessary.

Back at the Nuclear Prototype, in Balston Spa, N.Y., we would clean deck plates for hours.  At first we first assumed that there was some reason for this.  Deck plates, I should explain, are stainless steel plates about 3/16th inches thick and have that familiar deck grating diamond pattern.  It wasn’t enough that we sweep them, because that would only have taken an hour or so and Nav Regs clearly states that a certain minimum percentage of a sailors time must be spent cleaning.  Instead we were required to brush them with a wire brush.  The explanation was that this would remove a layer of ground in grease and dirt.  And after brushing an area rigorously for several minutes it would indeed look brighter and shinier.  You’re average person might accept this as evidence, but Navy Nucs are like the cerebral equivalent of special forces.  Only a year ago we had had a crash course in metallurgy and corrosion, in which we learned that stainless steel builds up a protective layer of iron oxide due to oxidation.  This layer is a dark discoloration that looks like ground in grease and dirt.  It didn’t take us long to realize we were accomplishing two things, neither of which could be called cleaning.

1)   We were removing the protective iron oxide layer opening the way for further corrosion.

2)   We were making a lot of dust and dirt which would get spread around making more field day type work necessary.

 

NEWS FLASH

 

Recently disclosed findings from a group of scientists in Washington were the cause of a special meeting in Congress today.  Up until now this project has been classified 'Top Secret', but we now know that it's purpose was to determine the primary threat to U.S. security in the 90's.  Though the results were surprising to some, a Navy spokesperson was quoted as saying "The Navy has already operated with these assumptions since the start of the cold war...we don't expect these findings to change any of our policies [since] they merely reinforce the Navy's mission today."

The recently released report stated that "The single most significant threat to U.S. security and military superiority since W.W.II and through the turn of the century was, is and will be dirt."  That's right, "dirt", and Congress today is meeting to discuss how this will affect military strategy and defense spending in the 90's.  The rest of the report deals mainly with how to deal with this threat.  Also mentioned are rust and other forms of corrosion, terrorism in the Middle East, and hard line communists.  Some critics say the findings are inaccurate due to falsified data and inadequate research.  In response to this the Navy spokesperson stated that "All of the researchers are highly respected by the Navy and these accusations are completely unfounded."

 

Eventually Paul and Mark are given their TLDs and not more than three seconds latter they are down in the engineroom cleaning.  Later that day, back in T-Div...

"Where have you been all day?" inquires the TPO.  This is not the same TPO they had met earlier.  There are several who work in the T-Div office and this one seems more...normal, than some of the others.

"We were field-daying in the engineroom." Paul replies.

"That's bullshit."  He seems notably disturbed.  "How are you guys supposed to get qualified on time if you're in the engineroom cleaning?  The next time someone tells you to field-day you come talk to me first."  With that he heads back into the office.

"OK, what do you think about that?" Paul asks.

"Well, I don't think he's mad at us; he's mad at them," Mark replies pointing toward the engineroom.

"That's what I mean." Paul returns.  "Not only does he have a spine but he's making sense too.  The difference between these two TPOs is like night and day."

"Yea, I know what you're saying, and I've been seeing a lot of that around.  There are definitely two schools of thought or maybe types of attitudes around here.  In any case I'll take studying in T-Div over cleaning down there any time." Mark says.

"You said it." Paul replies.

 

The next day it happens. 

 

As they are sitting on the messdecks studying a couple of guys with neatly pressed 4.0 uniforms come up and sit nearby.  They are looking at the pair, clearly not minding there own business, which Mark and Paul fail to point out to them, because they are wearing USS Truxtun Retention Team buttons!

 

Dun dun dun (music plays)

 

The nearest one asks, "How are you guys doing?" clearly leading into something.

"OK." they reply, and just for the sake of playing along "How are you?"

"Couldn't be better." Now they know there is something wrong.  "We've just been doing a little field-day you know, down in the plants."

This one appears to be the spokesman and he is lying of coarse.  If he had been working in the plants for any length of time there would have been grease splotches and sweat soaking through and his military creases would have become mere wrinkles in all the heat and humidity.  To emphasis this point, a badly bedraggled and exhausted Nuc emerges from One Plant looking like he hasn’t showered in three days.

After the ship has been out for a few days it becomes very easy to spot the people who work in the plants by their messed up dirty looking appearance and the various cuts scrapes and burns.  Mark and Paul have not yet had the pleasure of going on a cruise of any duration but green as they are, these guys are looking greener.

"Have either of you guys thought about re-enlisting yet?" says the spokesman.

Paul turns to Mark with a pleading look as if to say “Please let me pound the living crap out of him, or at least commence slapping him silly for even making the suggestion.”  Almost imperceptibly Mark turns his head from side to side indicating that discretion might indeed be the better part of valor in this case.  Maybe it was their painted on perfect smiles, but Mark senses that these two should not be taken lightly.  Well, to lightly anyway.

"Yeah, we've considered it." Paul replies, trying hard not to finish the sentence.

"Did you know that the Navy has a variety of outstanding career opportunities to offer?  You may be eligible for one of our officer programs..." the other one is producing tracts and pamphlets with titles like "Re-enlist now, don't miss the boat." and "STAR for a car and you'll go far."  STAR is a clever naval acronym for who knows what.

"...and as nucs you are both eligible for the STAR program." he says.

"With the STAR program you need only re-enlist for two more years to receive a bonus of as much as $12,000.  Why, you could buy a new car with that kind of money."

Just how much is my freedom worth Mark wonders, and his mind began to wander again.  A voice is saying "Thank you Monty, and behind curtain number two..." with trumpets in the background...

Somewhere else on the mess decks a voice quips, "STAR for your wife and ruin your life."  The assistant quickly scans the room looking for the perpetrator but everyone seems to be occupied, in spite of the scattered snickers breaking out here and there. 

 

This was a popular motto of the Retention Prevention Team.  The motto was based on an all to familiar scenario in which some poor nub would tell his wife about the STAR bonus.  The wife would then think “New Car!” and talk him into re-enlisting.  Then while the guy was on his first or second six month cruise the wife would decide that being alone wasn’t so great.  She would then use the new car to pick up guys.  Sooner or later the sailor would come back from a cruise to find his wife waiting with divorce papers.  She would then drive off into the sunset with her new boy friend, in the new car.  Ah, the romance.  I was a member of the Retention Prevent Team.  In fact I wrote and recorded a song.  I can’t play for you now because this is a book.  But I can show you the lyrics.  They’re not great but what the heck, its my book.

 

Verse 1
I talked to a friend just the other day
He was talkin’ bout signing his life away.
I told him he was better off working at Sears
But he went and signed up for 2 more years.

Verse 2
So listen to the words that I’m telling you
Or else your gonna have the reenlistment blues.
You’ve done your time, you’ve paid your dues;
Field day and haircut and wearing black shoes.

Chorus

   Do you understand what this song is about.
No time for 2nd thoughts, no time for doubts.
It’s time to pack up and it’s time to shout,
“Goodbye Navy, I want the hell out!”

Background Vocal
Retention… retention prevention.

 

"No thanks, I think we'll pass this time." Mark replies pushing back pamphlets and nudging Paul who is staring at something.

"You sure you wouldn't like to think about it?" the spokesman asks.

"Yeah sure, we’ll thinking about.  But we’re busy right now.”

“Well we've got to study and you guys probably have to get back to your cleaning but thanks for stopping by." Paul says.

"Sure anytime." he says in a casual way even though they both seemed a little tense.  One of them looks at the other, and then the other starts to rise as if to cue the first that’s its OK.  As they get up to leave Mark notices a strange seed-pod like object on the seat next to him which hadn't been there a moment ago.

"Oh, hey, you forgot this." Mark says handing it to them.

Suddenly their smiles are gone and they look nervous exchanging quick glances.  Then their composure returns.  The spokesman reaches out and receives the object with a hint of embarrassment saying, "Oh, yes, thank you."  With that they moved away, scanning the room briefly for other possible targets and then leave.  Mark and Paul are relieved.

 

Several weeks go by and ORSE has finally arrived.  Each day the ship pulls out of the harbor and into open water to run drills.  By this time Paul and Mark are nearing the end of their basic qualifications.  Their brief tour in T-div will soon be just another memory and the two will become part of the engineering work force.  At this time they are naively looking forward to the event with great anticipation.  After years of preparation and studying they welcome the change as if it were a coming of age.  No longer will they be non-useful bodies.  But for now they can sit back and watch the examination happen while taking very little part in it. 

 

Let me take a moment to describe ORSE to you.  Everyone has on their best 'Sunday go to meetin' working uniforms.  All the passageways have a fresh coat of wax so as to be very shiny and clean.  Everyone has a 4.0 haircut, a clean rag and a flashlight.  The latter two are to give the ORSE team the impression that everyone is really very concerned about the hypothetical dust ball hiding back in the corner behind that piece of machinery.  Or that we are always ready to wipe up the smallest drop of lube oil which might squeeze it's way out of our tightly sealed systems (snicker chortle).  Yet the whole time the ORSE team is there, no one does any real work for fear of being caught doing something wrong, or any cleaning of any kind for fear of getting some dirt on their uniform or scuffing that glossy shoe shine. The exception is the lube oil wipe up team, a crack team of highly trained (nubs) sailors who sweep through the plant (engine room) deftly wiping up unsightly oil any time there is a lull in the action.  Some of the nubs are put on coffee or donut patrol.  They follow the ORSE team around with trays of cookies and pitchers of coffee as if they are waitressing tables, ready to wipe their mouths for them should a dribble of coffee escape their lips.  Rumor has it there is also an ass wiping team, but their actual duties were classified.  The ORSE team walks around like gods and everyone plays along.  Many of the qualified Nucs get to go to interviews (read interrogation) and observed evolutions.  For the interviews the Nucs must bring a brand spankin’ new pad of paper and upon entering the ORSE members room (usually a stateroom commandeered from a more junior officer who would then be forced to sleep in a storage locker or something) the interviewee is then to say "Oh, all knowing ORSE team member who I am not even worthy to lick the dirt off thy boots, request to enter and be interviewed."  The ORSE member will then wipe the cookie crumbs from his face and motion his victim to a chair and then proceed to ask totally obscure and pointless questions like "..lets say you're standing watch in #2 Engineroom and the USS Truxtun has just broken the sound barrier.  At that same instant all of the particles on one of the fuel cells somehow reverse polarity forcing the Truxtun into a parallel dimension.  How will this affect neutron density in the primary reactor flow channels?"

For the observed evolutions the unfortunate Nuc will be required to perform some simple and routine task like tying his shoe for instance.  He would first have to locate an approved procedure for shoe tying and then follow it to the letter.  For example, all laces must be left over right going down through the eyelets as one proceeds from the bottom up while hoping up and down on the other foot etc...  And a few precautions would be thrown in providing important tidbits like, 'Ensure both ends will be of equal length as required by such and such (which in turn states that all shoe lace ends must be within 1/2 inch of each other in length unless it's Tuesday and the moon is in the waxing phase...)' or, 'Be careful not to put your eye out with the hard plastic shoe lace tips.  Wrap duct tape type IV (from a recently inspected roll no less) around all shoe lace tips prior to lacing to prevent injury.  Safety glasses should also be worn.'   These precautions would undoubtedly require a signature on a form somewhere.  Then to throw in an anomaly, they would have you tying white laces when the procedure refers only to black laces thus requiring a lot more forms to be filled out.  This anomaly is where operational knowledge and good judgment would come into play.  It would also give the Nuc a chance to employ some of his higher faculties thus proving that he was indeed a conscious sentient life form.  All of this will have to be completed while no less than four Lieutenants, three Captains, and two Commanders (and a partridge in a pear tree) stood by looking very grim and scribbling in their note pads while wondering if they will be getting back in time tomorrow for that 2 o'clock 'T' time.  This is the kind of thing that happens when you have authority without accountability.

I've come to suspect that the inquisitors are either writing letters to their wives about how incredibly bored they are with watching Nucs tie their shoes, or they're writing memos to their superiors about how nice it would be to get transferred somewhere warm and sunny, near a golf course.  In any case, please take a moment and reflect on how much you are paying to have all these well paid officers (and I do mean well paid) stand around eating cookies and watching Nucs tie their shoes.  It is pure unadulterated draconian bureaucracy.

The irony of the whole situation is that the ORSE team's job is to ensure that we are doing our job.  But inevitably we spend far more time and energy preparing to put on a good show for ORSE than we spend doing our job.  Now I suggested a solution to this dilemma which was greeted with less than measurable enthusiasm and none of the sincerity which it deserves as with most of my suggestions.  I suggested that we hire a company of actors to come play the part of the 4.0 watch standing Nucs.  They would memorize all the correct responses and rehearse all the procedures while the rest of us went about our assigned tasks.  I've also suggested taking all those lazy no load food eating air breathing space taking up bureaucratic overpaid sacks of . . . ehem . . . officers from Washington DC and giving them a rag and a flashlight so they could put in at least one honest days work during the fiscal year.  I swear if I ever meet one of them in real life I will at the very least break me big toe while trying to kick the living crap out of him.

 

 

 

Chapter 4

 

Anything but Training

 

Do you ever get the feeling you’re in the wrong place?  I do, like right now for instance, while I’m attempting to do a little writing on the mess decks (the place where sailors go to eat).  No one seemed to be watching the TV so I turned it down, it was a Bogart movie.  One of the guys sitting nearby says “I think there’s a good cop show on the other channel.  It’s probably a lot better than this.”  A good cop show?  Better than Bogart?  “Have you recently had a lobotomy or were you just born with really bad taste,” I didn’t ask.  Granted Bogart may be from before this guys time but why go on to insult ones own intelligence.  Now it may seem that I’m over reacting a little but for the individual I am insulting this has been just one of many injuries to good taste and intelligence.  I am by the way a major advocate of licensed reproduction, active birth control, gene pool screening or what ever you want to call it.  I believe Todd phrased it best in the movie Parenthood when he said, “You know it’s funny, now days you gotta have a license to drive a car.  You have to have a license to run a business.  Hell, you even have to have a license to go fishing, but they’ll let any *%@;#$&^XYZ be a father.”  I have seen many choice examples during my Navy career to support my premise, and to even necessitate some kind of humanitarian action.  I don’t mean to imply that this problem is limited to the Navy.  All over the world people continue to sit by while little Mansons, Bundys and lawyers are conceived.  I suppose many people would be afraid to institute the regulation of reproduction simply because no one wants to take the chance of losing their license.  I’m just talking about extreme cases here.  I know some guys who would make good poster fathers.  With captions reading something like, “Would you want this person as your father?” or “Would you like to see more people like this in the world?”  Maybe I’m just being overly critical.  Not! (sorry about the trendy thing).  Anyway, if I’m in the wrong place then where should I be?  I mean besides on land, with my wife.  I like to travel but you can’t really get very far on a ship.  Maybe 700 ft at the most and then you’re in the water.  You’re saying, “But wait, ships travel all over the world,” and you’re mostly right.  Ships travel all over that portion of the world that is covered by water.  Some ships even stop at those portions which are covered by land.  This is a concept that I have been trying to explain to my captain.  “You see sir, I believe ships were invented to get people from one piece of land to another,” I would say.  He would just look at me funny, straiten his garrison cap and say something like (actually originating from Navy propaganda posters at the Academy) “Sailors belong on ships and ships belong at sea.  A ship at sea is a ship for me.  A day in port is a day wasted.  That’s the way I see it and that’s all that matters.”  But why, me-thinks?  ‘Why’ however is not a word that occurs to a captain.  ‘Not in my navy’ anyway.  So the next time you’re at work or out picking up some groceries take a look around and ask yourself if progressive birth control isn’t such a bad idea.  As far as being in the right place, home would do just fine for me right now.  As opposed to harassing tuna boats off the coast of Ecuador for instance, and that is in fact what we’re doing at this instance, incidentally.  Now that the Russian fishing trawlers have gone home we’ve got to do something to justify our existence so we’ve headed south for the winter in search of drug running tuna boats rumored to be operating in this area.  This is not funny by the way.  Funny is more like what each of you is paying to have a Nuclear Guided Missile Cruiser with added helo detachment and Coast Guard complement options harassing tuna boats south of the border.

“Hey you with the fishing pole, freeze or we’ll launch a couple of Tomahawk cruise missiles at you,” says the radio operator up in the combat information center.  “We’ll be sending over some over rested coast guard dudes to have a look around so don’t try anything funny.”

“Coast guard?  Ecuador doesn’t have no stinking coast guard,” thinks Carlos as he slowly puts down his fishing pole.  As the inflatable Zodiac boat approaches he catches a glimpse of the letters U and S on the nose.  He then picks up his radio mic...

“Hey gringo, you’re a long ways from home and I’m in international waters.  You have no jurisdiction here.”

The reply comes back, “Shut up, it is useless to resist us.  If you do we will have no choice but to confiscate your boat and shoot you.”

Actually anywhere that served alcohol would be nice right now .  But I digress (what does that mean, really?).  Some people think my birth control ideas are a little reactionary.  I’m working on a plan to deal with them, but right now I can’t fit them into my agenda.  I usually just refer them to my friend Bruce to take the heat off.

As the Coast Guard pulls up along side the tuna boat a man with a megaphone shouts orders to the Ecuadorian.

“Prepare to be boarded.  Have your ship’s manifest ready for inspection.”

“Eh, is just a little tuna boat we don have no stinking manifest or nothing.  Eh you got any smokes?”

“What country are you from?  Answer in English, if you can.”

“Where do you think, I am from Ecuador cabessa de wesso.”

“Never mind that, what’s in the boat?”

“Fishes man, lots of fishes.”

...and off we would go to question more unsuspecting sea goers.

“Good bye gringos, buenos dias, cabessa de huevos.”

  Bruce believes that all stupid people deserve to die.  Especially the guy in the movie who goes into the house where the monster is, fully aware that the monster is probably somewhere inside waiting to rip off his head and dribble it around the living room like a basketball and make little balloon animals out of his intestines (due to the graphic nature of the last sentence younger reading audiences should skip to the next sentence).  That guy, according to Bruce, definitely deserves to die.  Or the guy that runs out of gas in the bad part of town.  He most likely deserves to die, but I think that’s a little harsh.  I may not like being around or having to do business with really stupid people but I don’t wish them any harm or ill fortune.  Even the guy in the movie doesn’t really deserve to die.  On the other hand he should never have been born in the first place and somebody should slap his parents.  Reactionary indeed.

 

A couple of months slipped by while I was rambling on and Paul and Mark were beginning to see the end of their T-Div days on the horizon (is that a mixed metaphor?).  It was a dim horizon I might add, but they were young and full of enthusiasm so they were not the least bit disheartened.  All along the Navy had been training them for a better brighter future as skilled workers with varied experience.  Now pay back time was rapidly approaching and we all know pay backs are no picnic.  They noticed that the Nucs in the other various divisions weren’t having many picnics.  Field days and working parties yes but no picnics going on.  T-Div itself was getting to be to restrictive, much like living at home is for an 18 year old.

Allow me to briefly recount, in the past tense, one of the more memorable moments which made the stay in T-Div more or less momentous or miserable for Mark (sorry about the ‘m’ thing), Paul or Pitts.  For some reason which exists only in an illusive almost vaporous state in the minds of those distant superiors whom they so dearly admired, it came about that every space on the ship would have to be ‘Certified’, or entered and inspected.  A space being any area not completely taken up by rigidly fixed matter in it’s solid state.  And so on duty days during the night they would carry large portable ventilation hoses up and down many flights of stairs and ladders to ventilate the `void spaces’.  These `void spaces’ were for the most part little sectioned air pockets separated from the ocean by about 1/2 inch of steel.  It was a bit more than 1/2 an inch back when the ship was new.  So there was the outer hull, the void space, and the inner hull creating a nice two layered effect with some air in the middle.  The void spaces were all dark, cold, clammy spaces with questionable oxygen content.  They would unbolt the manhole covers and drop the ventilation hose in, and then a while later a guy would stick this little gizmo in and after a few minutes declare it `Gas Free’ which always seemed a tad ambiguous to Mark.  He always wanted to say excuse me but what exactly does `gas free’ mean?  Do you mean to say there is no Nitrogen or Oxygen or what?  Are you saying a vacuum has formed in there or does matter exist in some breathable form?  And do you realize I’ve just hauled all this portable ventilation down here and incidentally pumped 50,000 cubic feet of air into this little hole which you have declared `gas free’?!

“..du..yup, that’s right George’ it’s ah..gas free.  You can go in now if you want.”

“Gee thanks George but I think I’ll get a second opinion.”

But the best part is yet to come.  The part where they would take their explosion proof flashlights (guaranteed not to explode or spontaneously combust), their bucket and sponges and descend into what were more often then not little coffin shaped compartments, connected to other coffin shaped compartments by holes just big enough to crawl through.  One void space which especially appealed to Mark’s sense of adventure went back several compartments and then over a few as well.  By the time he was well within the void he was wading on his hands and knees in two or three inches of water.  It was then his job to void the space of all water using the bucket and sponges in whatever manner necessary.  He would wonder how all that water got back into those dark, damp, tight little sealed off coffin shaped spaces as he sat, scrunched up, sponging water into a bucket for hours on end.  And then one night he had a dream that he was trapped in one of those compartments with no light whatsoever.  He yelled and pounded but the sound just fell dead.  He was sealed into a small void somewhere in the bowels of the ship, fated to starve or suffocate in total black clamminess.  As panic took over he began fighting his way back to consciousness, only to find that he truly was in total darkness.  His thrashing arms and legs only served to reveal the tight confines of the space he was lying in.  Once again panic began to take over but this time it was for real.  Then one of his hands hit a curtain, pushing it aside sufficiently to let in a few faint rays or light from the other side of berthing.  He wiped the perspiration from his brow and vowed never to enter a void space again.

The other experience worth mentioning was his club mess vacation which I’ll talk about later.  Right now I’d like to get back to the story. 

 

Paul and Mark are sitting down in the T-div classroom comparing qual card signatures when the humanoid TPO walks up, seemingly out of nowhere, and drops two new qual cards on the table.  Turning to his right he drops a third one down in front of another trainee who happens to be there.

“You must qualify these watches, this is your highest priority.”

He then turns pivoting on his right foot and walks out.  When he has gone the other trainee who had been flicking little pieces of paper about grumbles loudly, “This is B.S., how am I supposed to get qualified if they keep giving me new stuff to do,”  He says this more to fulfill a need than to express concern.  The other TPO pokes his head out of the office,  looks back and forth to see if the humanoid TPO is gone and then rolls out backwards on his office chair.

“These qual cards are hot,” he says.  “This comes from way up high.  They need people qualified Heise (pronounced hi-zee) gage watch for the upcoming yard period and you guys are among the lucky chosen ones.  I’ll suspend your other qual curves so you can work on these.  It should only take you a weak or two.”

“What does a high-Z gage watch do?” Mark asks.

“It’s very simple.  You just stand there in front of the Heise gage and when someone asks you for the primary pressure* you give it to them.”

“Sounds easy enough,” replies Paul, “What’s a high-Z gage?”

“Well good luck with the new qual, I got work to do, grading tests, and I plan to hit the beach later,” he says while rolling back into the office.  Peeking out again he looks at the third trainee and says, “Hey Rudie, don’t even think you’re going to milk this one.  We’re going to be sweating it pretty hard.”  As he shut the door the sounds of music from within faded to a barely perceptible thumping.  After a moment or two Paul turns to Mark and says, “Man, how are we going to qualify this in a week or two?”

“I don’t know, maybe it’s easier than it looks,” Mark replies.  “After lunch we’ll swing by the engineroom and find out how badly they need Heise gage watches.”

“Works for me.  Let’s go see what’s for lunch.”

Off they go to investigate the food situation, which is looking pretty bleak and unsatisfying this day.  They jump in line early enough to beat most of the crowd since it is not yet time for the mess decks to start serving and most people work up until lunch starts.  This is one of the perks that goes along with not having any responsibilities.  They manage to force down enough to keep them going until dinner and after dropping off their trays they headed to berthing for a nooner. 

 

`Nooner’ being the technical term for a highly cherished and time honored tradition of sleeping through the lunch hour.  The lights in berthing went off promptly at 11:30 every day and M-Div would take on the ominous resemblance of a battle field, with bodies strewn out all over the floor, lying there motionless.  At this point in my naval career the Truxtun was stationed in San Diego and it was the middle of summer.  Just to say it was warm would have been an understatement.  The floor in M-Div was by far the coolest place to lay under the circumstances. 

 

Paul and Mark scout the area until they find suitable places to `crash’ for their respective naps.  After lunch/nooner they head down to the engine room to generate some qual progress.  Before long, mechanics are lining up to sign their Heise gage watch qual cards.  People are calling their shipmates over to help sign off the various qualification requirements.  “Eh, Joe, come hook my boy up.  He’s qualifying Heise,” they would say.  Before long the pair begin to suspect that something is very wrong.  For Paul and Mark this is their first watchstation qualification.  Soon they will actually be able to stand a watch.

“You know what this means, if we qualify this watch?” Paul says.

“What?” Mark says, drooling false enthusiasm.

“Dude, remember back in power school how they used to tell us we weren’t even nubs yet?  We were nub candidates.  And now after two years of training we are about to become watchstanders, and therefore no longer nubs.”

“Wow that’s a good point,” Mark says unenthusiastically, and then after a moment or two he adds, “Hey Paul, maybe all this attention is not the god-send it appears to be.”

“How do you mean kemosabe?”

“Well, maybe the whole reason they are all so eager to get us qualified is that they don’t want to stand the watch themselves, comprehende señor?”

“Well, duhh.  More watchstanders means less watches.”

“Yea, so why not push for us to get our other quals done instead?”

“I see what you mean.  Like they’ll put us on these watches so they can stand better ones.”

“That’s what I’m thinking.  Maybe we could delay this qualification process a little,” Mark suggested.

“Yea,” replies Paul, “like maybe we need to study this Heise gage thing a little more.  I’m starting to feel pretty light on the subject.”

 

It is an accepted fact in the world of Naval Nuclear Power (and it is admittedly in a world of it’s own) that knowledge has mass and therefore weight.  So naturally the more one knows the `heavier’ one is.  If a guy should happen to know a lot about a particular subject then it might be said that he’s heavy on _______ , referring to that particular subject.  Conversely, if one should happen to know very little or be a clueless bastard or a witless buffoon it might be said in ridicule that ‘he’s pretty light’.  In regards to the Heise gage watch, the former case was applicable.

 

They start to get up to leave but it is too late.  They realizes, to their dismay, that their qual cards are completely signed off.  The others must have been using special nitrogen cooled pens.  Their qual progress can only be described as phenomenal.

“Quick, lets get back to T-Div and try to study some of this stuff before someone notices,” Mark suggests in earnest.

“If the TPO’s see our cards, especially you know who, and then discover that we don’t know this stuff it’ll look bad.  We could end up putting in extra hours, or getting some sigs scratched,” Paul ponders.

 

Getting ‘sigs scratched’ was politically a bad thing for them.  If a qualification requirement was signed off and the trainee clearly did not fulfill the requirement then the signature could be crossed out.  But even worse it indicated a lack of integrity.  Integrity was a nuclear power buzz word, like ‘honor’ among marines, and as with all things in the navy getting caught was much worse than the crime.

 

“Well we’ll go study somewhere else, where we’ll be less conspicuous,” replies Mark.

This works for about a week.  They even managed to get in a little extra beach time, but eventually they are stopped by the TPO.

“Where have you two been, I haven’t seen you in 5 days.  Produce your Heise Gage qualification cards for immediate inspection.”

They do as asked, simultaneously passing him their qual cards. 

“You have made satisfactory progress, you will arrange to see the Engineer immediately.  Check with me before leaving the ship today under threat of pain.”

All that remains for them now is to face the Engineer for their final boards and hopefully convince him that they are NOT ready to be standing Heise gage watches.  That night Mark has another rather memorable dream.  Let me tell you about it.

 

The Attack of the Heise Zombies

 


 

 

It was an innocuous, inconspicuous and uninspiring evening much like this one.  Ushered in by grayish formless cloudiness that should be rare this far into the summer but was all too familiar in this dreary little corner of the world.  I looked back on the day like a dream that had gone sour and was only vaguely remembered, as foggy as the night was not.  It should have rained but foregoing that the skies cleared just in time to reveal the moon, a full moon.  The scene was fatefully set for what was to come.  Down in the depths of the ship where relentless machinery churned day and night for months on end year after year driven by unseen forces, a bizarre transformation was taking place.  Somewhere at the heart of it all was a single gauge watched by a single watchstander.  Sometimes during the late hours of the night while strange evolutions were taking place for unknown reasons, a needle on the face of a gauge, which stood out against the black and white background like a beacon, would move a little to one side or the other and always it’s movements were followed be the unending stare of that single watchstander.  Every few hours a new watchstander would arrive, bleary eyed, the fog still clearing from his mind as he had been awoken just moments before to go take the watch.  The old watchstander would then leave for the dark solitude of his pit, only to return again later that night.  Like a monolith, the watchstander would stand frozen before the gage staring upward, as if mesmerized by it’s stimulus, minimal as it may be.  The gauge carried the name of it’s maker and was thus referred to as the Heise gauge, and it’s watcher as the Heise gauge watch.  What made this Heise gauge watch different from any other is hard to say.  Why this watch would be called `infamous’ in the minds of the few who lived to recall that fateful night must ultimately be reduced to destiny.

A combination of circumstances and events, the full moon, the chill which cut through the hull like an icy knife and stabbed at the heart of the ship.  The frightful boredom which threatened to overwhelm every Heise gauge watch, condemning him to an eternal pit of melancholy.  Maybe it had something to do with the now forbidden powdery concoction which some watchstanders would inhale through the nostrils in order to hold at bay the advances of sleepiness.  This mixture of crushed No-doz and aspirin could hardly be entirely to blame for the unearthly events to follow.  For on this night as the new watchstanders arrived and relieved the weary watch, the old watchstanders would not leave the engine room but instead lingered there in the shadows and dark corners, all with unnatural blank stares from eyes that were as wide as they were empty.  No sign of conscience or rational thought existed in those ominous stares.  For they were no longer the stares of conscious living beings but the stares of the living dead.  This went on all through the night until the early hours of the morning when even the most diligent had given in to the comfort of rest.  Many of the watchstanders who inhabited the deep dank places of the ship had relaxed their vigil and begun to doze as the dull quiet monotony took it’s toll.  In the dark shadows figures began to move like wraiths, slowly emerging from their places of hiding as if simultaneously set in motion by some invisible leader, purposefully oblivious to everything around them.  Everything except for the unwary watchstanders immersed in half waking dreams of the new day that they would never see.  The Heise zombies dispatched their victims with plodding ruthlessness and inhuman strength, strangling the last gasps of breath out of them without the slightest hint of emotion.  As they swept through the engine room they seemed to gain momentum, and a low murmuring began to rise up from their midst forming into an undulating chorus.  The last few remaining watchstanders now alerted to their presence retreated haphazardly in a state of panic, half numb with disbelief, into the enclosed operating station which was the nerve center of the engineering spaces.  Once within it’s confines they could dog the doors down and hopefully gain sanctuary from the sudden reign of death which had so abruptly turned a peaceful morning into a living nightmare.  From inside the chanting of the zombies could be heard clearly now as they repeated, tirelessly and without feeling the phrase, “mark pressure, zero and steady, mark pressure, zero and steady”.

 

“Mark pressure,” says the voice from the headphones.

“Primary pressure reads two seven zero pounds and lowering slowly,” Mark replies into the headset’s mic.

“Two seven zero and lowering, EOS aye,” the voice returns.

It is two thirty in the morning.  It is a duty day, and Mark is the Heise gage watch.  Needless to say the Engineer decided that they did indeed know enough to stand Heise gage watch and so the next day they were qualified.  Now here Mark is standing in front of the Heise gage calling in pressure readings.  At first it is kind of tricky because only the bigger increments have numbers by them, forcing the watchstander to count the little divisions and then multiply by ten (the value of the smallest division).  The watch officer wants the readings to the nearest pound (one tenth of the smallest division) which seems to be just about impossible at first.  But after standing several watches just staring at the damn gage for hours on end Mark can, at a glance, determine the needle’s position within a tenth of a millimeter.  He has great pride in his Heise gage reading abilities.  Well, maybe just a tiny little bit-o-pride.

 

It was very cold in the engine room  because the shipyard workers had cut huge gaping holes in the hull.  Outside the temperature was typically just above freezing and the wind blew right in to engine room.  Even with a jacket and a sweater the watchstanders were freezing because they couldn’t move around to keep warm.  Eventually they put a little heater down by the Heise gage because the watch officer couldn’t understand what Mark was saying.

EOS, “Mark pressure.”

Watchstander, “P-p-p-prim-m-m-mary p-p-p-p-pres-s-sure r-r-r- reads t-t-t-t-two f-f-f-f-f-ive...”

EOS, “Say again Heise gage watch.”

Watchstander, “I s-s-s-s-said-d-d...”

And then the watch officer would come down and yell at him, as if that would help, and threaten to have him relieved (oh my).  Mark figured it had to be some kind of reverse logic psycho-conditioning technique because he was entirely in favor of being relieved at that point.

Eventually the shipyard workers began painting the bilges at night thus creating another watch which we will talk about later and the fumes would float up and permeate the whole engine room.  Those were the best Heise gage watches.  His head would be swimming the whole time.  They later discovered that the Navy paid the shipyard $1,000,000.00 (no joke) to paint the bilges red.  In a ship that was scheduled to be decommissioned in 5 years this was, in the most modest sense of the word, an extravagance.  Again, we’ll get into that story a little later.  Allow me to continue on about duty days for a while.  They generally stood two hour watches, two on four off for a 24 hour period, except for duty weekends and then it was for 48 hours.  On those days, caffeine became a precious commodity in any form.  They would kill time by drawing on the face of the gage with a grease pencil (I’ve just incriminated myself).  Even when nothing was happening they were required to be there, awake and attentive just in case a sudden dramatic and catastrophic failure of the primary piping was to occur, which was slightly more likely than catching a neutrino with your bare hand.  In which case their job was to stand by the gage and say something like this.

“EOS, Heise gage watch (you always have to identify yourself).  Primary pressure dropping very rapidly, now reading one five zero, correction, one four, one three zero pounds,” he would say.

At this point the Watch Officer would proceed to soil his pants and mumble “It’s not my fault, my parents pushed me to hard.”

“One one zero pounds and lowering rapidly.  Heise gage watch, EOS aye,” the watch officer would say.

After the initial shock the Reactor Operator would begin turning knobs and flipping switches.  The Electrical operator would immediately follow suit.

“EOS, Heise gage watch.  Primary pressure reads seven zero pounds and still dropping.”

“Seven zero pounds and still dropping aye.”

The Watch Officer would by this time be calling everyone from his mother to the President of the United States and the Reactor Operator would be reaching for the fill switch.

“Heise gage watch, EOS.  Mark Pressure.”

“EOS, Heise gage watch.  Primary pressure zero and steady, request permission to secure the watch.”

Sweet words those; every Heise gage watch would dream of the day when that same little casualty would occur and he could then utter them.  Especially for the handful of us who stood forty of those watches in a month.

T-Div became their home away from home because it was the only warm place on the ship.  Some of the hatches leading to the weather decks up in berthing had to be left open because of cables and hoses running through them.  Heating steam to various parts of the ship had been tagged out for repair.  Blankets had to be kept locked up or they would disappear.  The three Heise gage watches had a couple of ‘duty’ blankets down in T-Div though, where they could shut the doors and turn the heat all the way up.  They would sleep right there on the floor and every two hours an alarm clock would go off.  Someone would leave and someone else would arrive and settle in to the warm spot on the floor.  This was typical for duty days.

 

The first few duty days Mark had the pleasure to participate in were pretty easy.  This was long before the yard period.  It was a new concept for him but just the same he never questioned it really.  Everyone seemed to accept the existence of duty days as a normal part of life.  For Nucs, the duty day came every third day regardless of weekends and holidays.  The most distinguishing characteristic of a duty day was that the participant was confined to the ship for that 24 hour period.  It was kind of like being grounded every third day.  Since Paul, Mark, and Pitts were only nubs and had no responsibilities to speak of, they spent much of their duty days, once the work day was over, asleep or watching TV.  With the exception of sweeping and taking out the trash that is.  Although the duty days themselves were not actually arduous, they definitely had a negative affect on the social life.  It is difficult for a civilian to comprehend this because he or she can for instance buy a ticket for a concert three weeks from now and then arrange his/her schedule so as to be able to attend.  A guy can tell his girl friend that he will see her the Friday after next or any time really without getting out his calendar and counting in threes.  But for a Nuc there is always at least a 33% chance that he will be confined to the ship on any given day, even Christmas and his birthday.

To make matters worse, occasionally the ship would go out to sea (as ships have been known to do from time to time) for a couple of days thus interrupting the previous duty day rotation schedule.  The end result being that planning anything more than two weeks in advance was complete folly.  On the other hand, if you were trying to avoid someone it could be quite handy.

Before long people began to notice Mark’s presence in the duty section and soon after that he discovered `nub watches’.  Nub watches are watches that require no skill, intelligence or training of any kind, and, it would seem, require no watch reliefs either.  I will describe briefly some of the more memorable watches.

 

     The Containment Watch: A watch where the nub would sit all day and/or night at the entrance of an area containing an opening to a reactor compartment.  The reason being that if some happy accident were to occur which could lead to gases or steam leaking from the primary coolant system, like for instance the reactor vessel, and getting into other parts of the ship, like where people sleep and breath, the containment watch would expeditiously close the door to that space and hang a `Do not enter’ sign.  This sounds good in theory, and that is after all what Navy Nuclear Power is all about, but maybe not so good in practice.  That is to say that no one has ever actually seen fission, and lived to tell about it.

 

NEWS FLASH

 

Nuclear Power is a fraud!  For years so called `experts’ in the nuclear power industry have been pulling the wool over our eyes.  Why you might ask?  That should become clear very shortly as I disclose the true nature of a `Nuclear’ power plant.  The NRC and their puppets, GE and Westinghouse, have had the scientific community fooled into believing that the purpose of certain chemicals added to the secondary system at nuclear power plants was to reduce the effects of corrosion.  New evidence shows that these chemicals contain sodium (di and tri-sodium phosphate) which reacts very violently when in contact with water.  The phosphates act as a buffer to prevent all the sodium from reacting at once.  These reactions which take place in the Steam Generators are what produces the steam for the turbines, and not the `Reactor’ as they would have us believe.  The entire primary system, including the very `expensive’ reactor and coolant pumps, is a hoax.  It’s only function is to monitor and control the reaction temperatures in the steam generators.  Each power plant reportedly spends billions of dollars on the construction and refueling of nuclear reactors.  No doubt some of that money goes to keep mouths closed.  More later...

And now, back to nub watches…

 

The Flooding Watch: A general catch all kind of name for a watch where the victim would sit in a deserted auxiliary room all day watching sea water drip from a hole in a pipe elbow, wondering if he would get to eat any dinner.  The flooding watch was tasked with the awesome responsibility of informing someone in the engine room via headset should the dripping become something more like flooding.  He might even have a little pump to turn on when the puddle got too deep.

 

The Fire Watch: This name was very misleading since the very purpose of the watch is to prevent fires from happening.  In this case the nub would be required to sit near a welder with a fire extinguisher hoping something would catch fire so he could spray CO2 all over it.  Mark used to pray, “Please God let it catch on fire before my other foot goes numb.”  Once the welder had finished the Fire Watch was then required to hang around for thirty minutes just in case something was inclined to catch fire but was very slow about it.

 

As he became a more senior nub he moved up to watches with watch reliefs!  Which meant that after a certain amount of time passed someone else showed up and took over the watch.  His favorite was something called the donut watch.  No one seemed to know the origin of the name but the watch had very little to do with donuts.  The `donut’ was a sort of floating tank to which ‘they’ could pump all the dirty oily water that collected inside the ship.  The tank had no bottom, the reason (however sleazy it may be) being that the oil in the water which they pumped to it would float being trapped in the tank while the water was simply displaced out the bottom, along with any other dirt or slime that was heavier than water.  Clever idea in theory, but in these enlightened times where environmentalists have college degrees it’s not really such a clever idea.  The most obvious flaw being that when all the water is displaced the oil runneth over, or under in this case.  That’s where the Donut Watch came in.  He would stand up by the railing on the ship, looking down at the donut, looking for signs of oil. If per chance oil were to begin surfacing around the tank he would call the guys in EOS on my headset.

“Hey, I think the donut is over flowing,” he would say.

“Are you sure it’s over flowing?  What does it look like?” they would say in return.

“Well, there’s these oily looking splotches that seem to be floating up to the surface,” he would reply.

“All right we’ll have someone come up and take a look.”

A few minutes later someone would come up and check it out and then say, “Yup, it’s over flowing all right.  I guess I’d better go shut off the pump now.”

And that’s how it works.

 

Far less popular than the Donut Watch was the Bilge Watch.  The sole function of the Bilge Watch was to prevent water from getting into the bilge.  “But wait,” you’re saying (at least those of you who understand boats, for more info please refer to appendix A), “isn’t that what bilges are for, to catch water?” Ding ding ding winner, winner, now here is a question for you.  Do you have any idea how much tax money is required to train a Nuc for two years so he can stand a bilge watch?  But you’ll sleep better knowing he’s there won’t you?  That’s what people like Mark and Paul were there for, that’s why it’s called “the service”.  There is no point really in explaining the functions of a Bilge watch.  Not that that has ever stopped me before, either.  It does lead into another story however which takes place at the same time.

While Mark was on board the Tommy T almost every department on the ship was in debt because it always cost much more to keep the old bitch running than it was worth, I mean than the Navy’s budget would allow.  In spite of this fact, as I mentioned before, the ship paid the shipyard one million dollars to paint the bilges red.  (Terra-cotta red no less) The reason being that the little rust spots looked bad and the ORSE inspectors would always point them out while peeking under deckplates with their explosion proof flashlights.  Many of the engineering crew were very upset when they heard of this.  Especially since their requests for simple tools necessary to do their work were repeatedly denied on the basis of budget considerations.  Mostly they were upset because M-Div would have been willing to paint the bilge red for half the money and in half the time.

“For half a million dollars my mother would have painted the bilge red,” Mark thought.

Now having bored you sufficiently with these details I will back track a little and continue the story with the ship’s arrival in Washington.

 

Upon their arrival in Bremerton for the later to be infamous 89’ yard period, Paul and Mark immediately began their search for off-ship housing.  They’d heard the stories about shipboard life in the shipyard, all of which turned out to be true incidentally, and decided that for the sake of sanity and to maintain some semblance of a social life they would have to have their own pad.  By `their own’ I mean just the two of them and two other guys and anyone else from the ship who might be staying for the night and whatever homeless people they might be taking in.  The search for a home was not very productive at first and often led to taverns and bars rather than houses and apartments.  But they did learn one thing, besides how much Ralph could drink and still make it back to the ship.  They learned at least that housing in Bremerton was affordable even by navy enlisted standards.  In San Diego the cost of living was much more prohibitive even when split four ways, and there were far fewer places that would allow four sailors and there friends to inhabit one dwelling.

Having just come from sunny So.Cal. neither of them were really prepared for cold weather.  Many of there belongings, including the warm weather clothes had, had to be left in So.Cal. because they couldn’t be taken on the ship.  But the ship had allowed motorcycles to be transported in the helo-hanger, and Paul’s Vespa scooter was now in Washington.  So in the middle of winter and with nothing really warm to wear they would hop on the scooter after work and go house hunting.  Many of their inquiries went something like this;

 

“How you doin Paul?” Mark yells.

“I’m freezing, what do you think!” Paul yells back.

“Want to stop and warm up a little?” Mark asks.

“Yes but my hand is frozen to the throttle,” replies Paul, “Besides we’re almost there.”

“There’s the street, turn here.”

They slow a little as the Vespa takes the corner.  It is dark already.

“536, that’s it on the left,” Mark shouts.

After coming to a stop they both slowly slid off the scooter.  To stiff to actually stand up or straighten their arms.  They begin rubbing their hands together, slowly at first, and breathing into them.  Then they begin stamping their feet to bring the feeling back and occasionally attempting to bend at the knees.  From across the street the perspective renter is looking out of the window at the strange sight wondering what these two morons are doing.  Then her expression turns to one of understanding as they begin to move stiffly toward the house.

“Go ahead and knock, my hands might shatter,” says Paul.

So he does.  The door opens and they are greeted by a woman in her mid sixties.

“We’re the ones who called earlier about the house for rent,” Mark says.

“Well come in, I’ll show you around.  I should warn you it’s not very fancy, and I couldn’t have more than three boys living here.  There is no shower, only a bath tub,” she explains.

Like so many houses in the area it is an old wood depression era house built back before showers had been invented.  It’s only source of heat is a wood stove, and it has that labyrinth look to it that says “We just made it up as we went along with little or no regard for the size or workings of the human body, i.e. functionality or ergonomics.”

“I hope that’s not a problem.  I know you youngsters like to shower in a hurry so you can go out at night.  I can’t have any wild parties going on here with the loud music.  Last year we had some boys in here who liked to have wild parties and we had to ask them to leave.  You’re not planning on having your girlfriends come and stay are you?”

And so on and so forth.  They gladly endure the little commentaries as it gives them a chance to thaw.  Then Paul and Mark say thank you but no thanks and climb back on the scooter for the chilling ride home.

 

About this same time Paul and Mark were nearing the end of their Basic Qualifications and were considering the various options awaiting them.  There was M-1 Division, and M-2 Division, or else they could just go UA (formally known as AWOL and stands for either Unauthorized Absence or United Artists).  The `M’ in M-1[2] stands for Mechanical which can imply a whole myriad of unpleasant things which, once again I will not elucidate because my wife says it sounds too much like whining.  In addition to going UA they could choose from several other options which in retrospect might have been the more fortuitous course of action.  Among them were, most notably, getting expelled from the Navy, which is referred to as some sort of ‘discharge’, and getting de-nuked, which refers to having ones Nuclear qualification revoked.  In the latter case the aspirant is forced to take a far easier and less political or stressful job with the threat of shore duty after only 3 years of sea service.  Oh my!  So to summarize for those who weren’t paying attention, they were given two choices.  Get qualified and go to M-1 Div or get qualified and go to M-2 Div.  Their countenance was lifted for a short while by two intervening events.  Without which their first experience with a “shipyard period” would have been completely devoid of pleasant memories.

The first event was the closing of their berthing compartment.  Living conditions had become so bad that even the Navy agreed that it was unreasonable to make people live there.  At this point there was no heat, no toilets or showers and constant grinding and pounding around the clock from the various shipyard jobs in progress which made sleep an impossibility short of coma.  Consequently, everyone in the forward part of the ship was given a room at the Navy’s bachelor quarters (BEQ) on the base.  Yippy!  Three men to a room vise the usual fifty to which they had become so accustomed.  Each man had his own closet like locker with hanging space and drawers.  They had cable TV and a small refrigerator, and maid service for a dollar a day.  It was the lap of luxury.  Mark ended up rooming with Spunky Bob and an electrician’s mate (EM) referred to only as Droopy.  Mark even got his keyboard set up for a little musical recreation.  The sun managed to come out for a period that could almost be called summer, causing great fear and panic among the native Washingtonians.  Many of whom feared that their skin would dry out.  Droopy mainly occupied his time by sitting inside his closet and reading car manuals which is odd for any number of reasons, but primarily because he didn’t have a car.  For five glorious weeks  they were allowed to stay there, and all their hurry and panic over finding a house dwindled away to a faint memory.  That is until the harsh reality of shipboard life threatened them once again when they realized that, in a matter of days, they’d be waking up to the sound of the ship’s announcing system broadcasting “Reveille, reveille, all hands heave to and trice up.” at 6 am.  In six years Mark never figured out what that meant.  For him it always invoked images of someone tossing his cookies and then having to clean it up.  It was a full hour and a half before Quarters (that’s 7:30 for you less mathematically inclined persons).  Now what sense does this make, he would ask himself, before giving in to the realization that the Navy was run by a malevolent beings who despises logic above all else, and who’s ultimate goal is to take over the minds of it’s subjects.  But for the sake of all you folks out there who are able to use logic as a source of direction and wisdom in life, we will go on.

“Suppose for a moment,” Mark queried, “that I were to ‘roll out’ (Navy term made popular by truck drivers) at 6 am.  It would then take me 7 minutes to put on the same clothes I wore yesterday, because in the Navy that is acceptable and appropriate, assuming I put on clean underwear and socks, (other wise it would take only 5 minutes).  One minute would be required to run the electric shaver over my face.  Then, having donned my respirator I would begin the journey to the bathroom.  Once I had crossed to the other side of berthing through all the early morning traffic, I merely have to push the door open and enter the bathroom.  To use the facilities and wash my face, usually takes another 5 minutes after which I would go back to my pit and lock up my soap and toothbrush.  Add another 3 minutes for me to grab my hat and walk to the flight deck and that makes it ~6:18 am.”  He had a Chief that would come by at six and turn the lights on and wake everyone up to make sure berthing was swept before Quarters.  That was about a ten minute evolution, for one person, so with cleaning it was 6:28 am.  The Navy uses a special Top Secret floor tile which melts if it isn’t swept at least four times a day.  If the Communists ever found out I’m sure they would all surrender immediately.  Which is why it has to be kept a secret you see, to keep the Navy in business so-to-speak.  Every morning at Quarters the Division Officers would extol the virtues of sweepers to there men.  Several times a day the order was broadcast, “Sweepers, sweepers, man your brooms.  Give the ship a clean sweep down fore and aft.  Sweep down all stair wells, ladder backs and passage ways.  Now sweepers.”  To ensure that the floor tiles did actually get swept, a ‘sweepers list’ was posted outside the Master at Arms office every morning containing signature blocks in a grid like fashion cross referenced to four times and about twenty divisions.  And to emphasize the seriousness of this piece of paper the Commanding Officer himself reviewed it every day to see who had been naughty or nice.  If the little blocks weren’t filled in a timely manner the MAA would fill them in with his red felt pen of serious naughtiness.  Following the natural coarse of evolution the signing for sweepers became far more important than it’s actual performance.  As a consequence people soon became more and more reluctant to sign with their own name.  Not surprisingly, the names of sailors who had left the ship recently keep turning up on the sweepers sheet.  Occasionally (frequently) someone famous like Richard Nixon or John Hancock would even sign for sweepers.  I guess word really gets around.  One more thing I’d like to point out which made no sense to him.  Since on a Navy vessel there are no ‘stairs’, as he was often reminded, only ‘ladders’, why is it they were told to sweep down stairwells?  Most likely another ploy designed to confuse the enemy.

Now you may be thinking (getting back to our original train of thought) that there is still time for breakfast and a shower.  Well bite your tongue, twice.  Most sensible people choose to skip breakfast on board the ship.  If not for purely esthetic reasons, then for the sake of a longer healthier life.  One only needed to look at a Chief (to lose one’s appetite) to see what shipboard food could do to you over time.  As for showers, what’s the point when you’re about to go get all hot and sweaty in the 120 degree, greater than 100% humidity of an engine room?  Better to shower before going to bed.  So there you have it, the difference between military logic and Mark logic is about 1 hour and 2 minutes.

 

In the intervening time between the BEQs and Mark’s mess tour they found a place to rent which was within walking distance of the ship.  The fact that it took only twenty minutes or so to walk to the ship was highly significant due largely to the fact that the parking on, at, or anywhere near the base was woefully inadequate.  They had rented an old three bedroom house along the gravely shore line of Dyes Inlet, right under a bridge.  The house was across the inlet from the shipyard.  They split the cost four ways.  The latter they accomplished by finding two more guys who wanted to move off the ship and not surprisingly it didn’t take them long.  The house included two old beds, a beat up refrigerator, and a wood stove that leaked as their only source of heating.  For the first few weeks Paul and Mark were the only ones living there.  They managed to get some fire wood delivered (dropped on the door step, literally) which they subsequently carried down to the back of the house and chopped into smaller pieces.  It rained the whole time and they got soaking wet, and after all it was the great northwest.  Fortunately there existed a small covered area at the back of the house where they were able to stack the wood.  Then with the help of some newspaper they were able to start a small fire in the wood stove, which consequently caught on fire being that it was made of wood.  OK it didn’t really catch on fire because it was a `metal’ stove, and the heat that it radiated was enough to dry them off once they had peeled off the outer layers, and warmed them completely through in a half hour by estimation.  By this time they were in the dead of winter and the heat was most welcome.  It was not unusual for the temperature to drop below freezing outside.  Being from the fairly modern and seldom cold city of L.A. (that’s in So Cal for you geographically impaired), Mark was intrigued by, and highly skeptical of, I will most likely add, the idea of heating without a forced air convection gas, or electric, furnace, but Paul had on the other hand grown up in cold country where people have been known to burn down their houses to keep warm, and fortunately (breath) knew how to work a wood stove.  [And you thought the Germans had some confusing sentence structures?  You may find this hard to believe, but I actually got an A in first AND second semester English Composition classes.  In fact I had first English Composition TWICE and got As both times. J]  But unfortunately, because of all the various leaks and a clogged exhaust pipe more wood had to be shoveled in about once every two hours to keep the thing going.  They discovered this the hard way when they woke up to find that it was 40F in the house, and both of them were too cold to dare to venture out from whatever warmth their beds still provided.  After that experience they decided to set up a rotation schedule such that the furnace was fed frequently enough to facilitate and perpetuate the fire.  As a result they both had to get up every four hours, at evenly differing intervals, during the night so that someone could throw another fag on the fire.  The situation was not exactly ideal, but it was a home, and no one woke them up to sweep the kitchen at 6 am, or make them take out the trash on their day off.  At home they could wear anything they wanted, make as little or as much noise as they wanted, eat whenever or whatever they wanted.  In short it was heaven on earth.

By the end of the first month they had managed to acquire some furniture, with the help of the local Salvation Army Thrift Store.  They had a coffee table and a TV stand, an old sofa and a lazy chair.  Life was pretty good and it continued to be good for a couple of months.  For Mark it continued to be good for several months after that thanks to his `Mess Tour’.  As the ship neared the end of it’s time in the shipyard there was much left to be done and little time to prepare for what was ahead.  A lot of important testing had to be done and the ship had to be made ready for the up coming ORSE inspection.  To support the work load the Engineering Dept. went into shift work.  Three non rotating shifts with no days off.  On top of that they added 2 more hours for training.  Before long the shifts were putting in 4 extra hours after shift for cleaning.  The Engineer had given some encouraging speech about how all the enlisted were lazy scumbags and if had they done their jobs more effectively they would only be putting in 2 or 3 extra hours and how the floggings would stop when morale improved.  This went on for several weeks until finally the Engineer went nuts and was forced to take emergency leave including a little visit to the Naval Hospital’s psych ward.

On reflection, Mark could imagine the Engineer saying to his lieutenants “the tempo is going to pick up a bit as we get near the end here,” as part of a passing conversation.  It was never the blood sweat and tears of men like these which is really at stake and so it was easy for them to speak courageously of hard times ahead.  Or to speak proudly of the sacrifices others would have to make.  However, the workers were required by law to have the utmost respect and loyalty for this man and others like him, who’s `sacrifices’ were rewarded with three times the money they were making, and who were encouraged to look down on the working classes, the enlisted masses, without the slightest need for respect or regard for their dignity.  Sound a little overly dramatic?  Well, take it as you want.  To become a member of the elitist officers club one had only to wear the uniform of a Naval Officer but that is not to say that all Officers were elitists.  This mostly occurred in the higher ranks or with Academy grads.  But the underlying trend was always there.  The segregation which is more prevalent in the Navy than in almost any other branch of service was largely to blame for the schism, which both the enlisted and officers helped to widen on a daily basis.  The enlisted men naturally resented the special privileges reserved for officers and therefore tended to blame them for every thing they disliked about the Navy, when in fact most of the officers were also just pawns in the game.  The newer officers would then respond by blaming the enlisted for all their problems and under the influence of their superiors the transformation would begin.  The officers would slowly alienate themselves to the elitist officers club.  Then in ports they would band together to enjoy activities or hangouts which the enlisted personnel couldn’t afford.  Mark did on occasion work with this one officer who treated everyone according to his merits, officer and enlisted alike, in spite of all the peer pressures on both sides.  He was quite a character.  In foreign ports he would often spend his time scuba diving or engaged in some other activity, sometimes with enlisted men.  Many of the elitist officers didn’t like him.  He was discharged from the Navy several months early for playing volleyball with enlisted personnel at a ship’s picnic.  Cest’ La Vie.

 

“Hey Paul, I just heard I’m going to the mess decks,” Mark says looking fairly pleased with himself, and then with a far away kind of look, “Ahh yes, Club mess vacation, the antidote to qualification.”

“A mess tour is gonna set you back a couple of months,” Paul retorted.  “I’m at 95% right now.  In two more weeks I’ll be qualified.”

“Yea, I’m about 95% too.  And I’m just as sick of T-Div as you, but just think, two whole months without any fire watches, without any Heise Gage watches, without any bilge watches.  No duty days.  No one saying get qualified nub.  No thought required at all,” Mark continues.

“All right, all right I see your point and raise you one.  No stress.  You lucky dog!  It will be like a brain vacation.  When do you start?”

“I don’t know dude but I hear it’s pretty soon.  But I haven’t told you the best part yet,” says Mark.

“Oh, please do,” Paul replies sarcastically.

“I’m going to the Chief’s Mess,” Mark replies with emphasis.

“To be the Chief’s boy?  Gonna be their little lackey?” says Ralph distastefully.  “Wait a minute, isn’t the Chief’s Mess closed right now?”

“Yup,” Mark replies, “completely and totally.  All we’ll be doin is waxing floors and picking up their laundry.”

“You mean you gotta do their laundry?”

“Just pick up and take down,” Mark answers.  “Ship’s laundry handles all the dirty work.”

“Shoot man, I could use some a’ dat,” replies Paul.

“I know I could use some a’ dat,” emphasizing with strange hand gesture, “Especially since I heard the Engineer say something about the tempo picking up as we near the end of the yard period,” Mark says. “I also heard that T-Div was going to be helping to clean the engine rooms so there won’t be a whole lot of qualifying going on around here while we’re gone.”

 

 

Chapter 5

 

The Chief’s Mess

 

Several days later at Quarters the TPO is going over the POD (Plan of the Day).  As usual, 95% of it has nothing to do with them.  It goes something like this:  “8 o’clock blah blah blah 10:30 blah blah blah, see so and so if you need such and such blah blah.  All personnel must blah blah blah.”  The attendees are all shuffling their feet and day dreaming.  Then their attention picks up a bit for the next part.  “Captains Mast: Gunners Mate Hernandez was detained by the boarder guard last week while on his way back from TJ when he attempted to re-enter the US without any pants on. He received a spanking from the captain with a perforated wood paddle, loss of two weeks pay, restricted to the ship for a month, and reduction in rate to non-existence is suspended pending review in one month.”

 

Quarters is a little like Catholic Mass.  There are a lot of repetitive stuff that you have to sit, or stand, through.  And every division reads the same stuff.  One of the more interesting bits is the Captains Mast.  Captains Mast is the ships very own feudal justice system.  I’m sure the term comes from the old practice of trying people to the mast and flogging them.  If you have any doubt try the book “Two Years before the Mast.”  When one misbehaves one must appear before the captain/feudal lord who then dispenses punishments.  Double Jeopardy is NOT a problem, get busted in town, get busted on the ship too.  A two-fer!  BTW: TJ is short for Tijuana Mexico, which is only about a half hour drive from the navy base.

 

After the reading of the POD.  Some more relevant info is promulgated.

“Petty Officers Pressure and Mena you will report to the Chief’s Mess today.  You will be working for Chief Fraiser.  He’s expecting you after quarters.  Your qual curve will be suspended for the duration.  Dismissed.”

“Get outta here crank,” someone says.

Mark turns to Paul and says, “Well, see you later.”

“Yep, good luck.” Paul replies.  And at that Mark leaves and makes his way to the Chief’s Mess. 

Fortunately, Mark will miss out on the ORSE sweats, but Paul will not.  This is the beginning of the end of a close friendship, but it is also the beginning of a new friendship.  Sam Mena is a new nub, also a machinist mate.  They have a lot of things in common, besides the clothes they are wearing.  They both love So. Cal. so obviously they are both idealists (a little regional humor), and they both dislike the Navy.  More importantly, they both love music.  They both play music.  In fact, a typical day for them consisted of waxing a floor and then sitting around listening to music.  But I’m getting ahead of the story.

 

“Hey Sam, I didn’t know you were going to the Chief’s Mess.” Mark says.

“Yea, well I didn’t know that you were going to the Chief’s Mess, so we’re even.” Sam replies.

“Do you know who this Chief Fraiser is?”

“No, some topside loser lifer-geek, I imagine.  Anyway I’m in no hurry.  I’ve got a few things to do so I’ll see you there in an hour or two.”  Sam doesn’t really have anything he has to do right them.  He is taking advantage of the change in command, to do some ‘skating’. 

“Well I’m in no hurry, how about we met up after lunch.” Mark suggest.

Sam looks at him as if to say, “how about if you don’t tell me what to do.”  After a second or two Sam decides that Mark is not taking up the challenge and says “Yea, OK”

Later, after lunch, they meat up down in the Chief’s Mess.  The Chief’s Mess includes the forward Chief’s quarters, Chief’s head, the Chief’s mess deck, lounge and galley.  There is also an aft Chief’s quarters. 

Soon Chief Fraiser arrives.  “Are you the guys engineering sent down to work here?” he asks.

“Yea, uh-hu” they say.

“You were supposed to report this morning, what happened?”

“We got lost,” Mark doesn’t say.

“Oh, we were told to report after lunch,” Sam says very convincingly.

“OK, well I’m Chief Fraiser,” he says with authority.

“He’s buying it” Mark and Sam are thinking.

The Chief goes on to give them a tour and an indoctrination on their duties.  This takes about thirty minutes.  This includes a discussion on tipping.

“There is a tip jar in the lounge.  Each month you collect the tips and distribute it amongst yourselves.”  Mark and Sam’s eyes widen.  The Chief explains that there is tipping because technically enlisted men are not supposed to server enlisted men.  “Since the galley is closed you won’t be getting a lot of tips, but in a few weeks when it opens up again…” Mark and Sam’s stomachs drop “…you will get more tips.”

“Today I want you guys to clean and wax aft CPO’s (Chief Petty Officers berthing at the back end of the ship) berthing for the XO’s (eXecutive Officer’s) zone inspection tomorrow,” says the chief.

“OK chief, we’ll get started on it right away,” Mark and Sam reply. 

The chief leaves.

Then off they go to aft CPO’s berthing.  For a couple of hours they clean, until the floor is ready for waxing, and then they take a break.  Sam has his tape player and they are listen to something like Rush or Pink Floyd and talking about all sorts of things but especially music. 

“Hey Sam,”

“Yea?”

“If it’s the Chief’s mess, how come we gotta clean it up?” Mark asks rhetorically.

“Uh, because their Chiefs and you not?”

“Hey, have I ever told you Mark’s theorem on Chiefly communication?” asks Mark.

Sam looks up as if to say “go ahead”.

“OK,” Mark begins with enthusiasm, “my theory owes it’s simplistic nature to the fact that if Chiefs had any imagination they would have gotten out years ago.  So the theory goes that there are really only two phrases one needs to know to talk to a chief.  The first one is “We’re taking a break” which requires no explanations.  The second one is “Yes Chief”, which serves two purposes,” holding up one finger, “Primarily, its an affirmation which says to the chief “I hear and obey,” and then holding up the second finger, “and secondly, its an acknowledgment which says to the chief “Yes you are a Chief and I recognize that.”  Let me give you an example…”

As if on cue Chief Fraiser walks in and sees them kicking back.

“What are you guys doing?” the chief asks suspiciously.

“We’re taking a break,” Mark replies.

“Well you need to get back to waxing this floor ‘caus the XO will be coming through tomorrow..,” the Chief continues.

“Yes Chief,” Mark replies.

With that the Chief nods and, having done his job, leaves.  Mark smiles at Sam who laughs.  They go back to listening to Rush or Pink Floyd. 

This same scene is repeated each day with minor variations.  Manipulating the chief becomes daily entertainment.  In the afternoons they go and pick up the laundry and distribute it and then hang out for a while and then go home early.  Not a bad deal all things considered.

 

This brief respite, often refereed to as a ‘good deal’ in Navy habitats, which our two protagonists were enjoying at the end of chapter 4 could not last for ever.  The first indication of this was the word ‘brief’ which I used in the previous sentence.  Rumors spread that the shipyard period was coming to an end and the ship would be going out to sea for a long time.  As the ship readied itself to get underway, so did the Chief’s mess.  Several weeks before actually leaving port they began serving the Chief’s back down in the mess and so the pace picked up a bit.  A couple more cranks were recruited to help out and an MS was sent down to help prepare the food.  Much to Mark’s surprise most of the food was actually carried down from the crews mess and then put out on the table for the Chief’s nutritional enrichment.  The MS took care of the complicated stuff like eggs to order (sort of), and keeping the food warm.  Mark did notice that the eggs were cooked a little better but the MS’s were still under the misconception the ‘scrambled’ meant fried and then chopped into little pieces.

 

The scene is the Chief’s galley where Mark and Sam are making preparations for its opening.  A new guy arrives on the scene.

“Hi, you gonna be workin down here?  I heard there were a couple of new guys on the way,” Sam says.

“I guess so, who am I supposed to check in with,” says the new guy.

“Chief Dingelberries is in charge of the cranks down here.  We’re supposed to open up tomorrow but we...” indicating Mark and him “...don’t really have any idea what we’re supposed to be doing as yet.  I think an MS is supposed to come down and get things organized today.  So what’s your name?”

 “My name’s Gary,” he says, looking him in the eye in a very non threatening way.  “There’s another guy on the way down here, we’ve been workin up on the mess decks.”

“Ah, well I’m Sam.”

“And I’m Mark, it’s good to meet you Gary.  How long have you been working on the mess decks?”

“Oh, about six weeks now.  I should be done in another couple of weeks so I won’t get much underway time down here.”

“Yea, same here, Sam and I will be leaving in about ten days to go back to engineering.  Pretty good planning.”

“They better not even try to keep us here longer because there’s no way engineering is going to leave us down here with ORSE coming up,” Sam says.

“So you guys are Nucs huh?” Gary says with a smirk on his face.  “Must be sort of nice to be down here while all the sweats are going on.  On the other hand you guys only have to put in one month on the decks right?”

Right then another guy appears at the door.

“This is my third mess tour man, you Nucs have got it so easy,” he says with undirected anger.

“I take it you’ve been sent to work down here too?” Mark asks.

“Yea, but not for long, I’m going to talk to my lieutenant tomorrow because I was supposed to go back to division yesterday.  It’s someone else’s turn.  I’m a gunners mate not an MS, I’m supposed to be working in the missile house and not mess cranking,” replies the new guy trying to sound very important.

“Well you’re hear now so we might as well get your name.”

“Names are just labels man, back in my division people just call me Starcher.” (This really happened, another example of how life is weirder than fiction)

“Well welcome to the Chief’s Mess Starcher, as you can see it’s a real mess right now too,” says Sam.

“Do you have any idea who the MS is who’s supposed to come down here and get everything set up?” asks Mark.

“You mean he’s not hear yet?  You know they’re supposed to be opening the mess up tomorrow,” answers Starcher.  “I’ll tell you what you do is, find the Mess Chief, Chief Barrion.  He’s hard as heck to understand but he’s a genius.”

“Well, there’s nothing more we can do here.  Hey Sam, what do you say we go find this Barrion guy,” Mark suggests.

“Dude, what’s the hurry.  Let’s just kick back here for a while,” Sam replies.

“I don’t wanna be stuck here until late tonight getting this place ready,” Mark says.

“Well it’s only 9:30 now, we’ll skate until lunch and then we’ll find this guy.”  Skate is a Navy slang term meaning to not work.

“Sounds like a plan to me,” Mark agrees

At this point they all sit down against the various metal cabinets and the broken dishwasher.  Within a few minutes Starcher is telling salty sea-dog stories.  Mark guesses right from the start that this guy is no Nobel prize nominee.  In fact Starcher is what they commonly referred to as a rock. 

“...back in West Pac of  ‘88 we hit 40 foot seas.  One of the missiles got loose and was rollin around the missile house.  Me an the Chief had to go in there and stop it before the damn thing went up and took out half the ship....got so hot in the Indian Ocean last year we had the booster suppression system go off twice.  Nearly drowned two guys who were workin down there...one time a hot shell got stuck in the 5 inch and they had to send me in with a paper clip and a shoe horn to get it out....there were at least 10 Iraqi gun boats comin straight at us and the 55mm’s breach mechanism broke, I had to fix it with some duct tape and a piece of chewing gum I had with me.  Got a pat on the back from the Captain for that one...me an the cap’em were buddies...Well I gotta go check on some stuff for the gunners mates.  I’ll be back later,” he says as he walks out the door, I mean hatch.

After he leaves Mark turns to Sam and says, “What a rock.”

“Yea, no kidding,” Sam replies, shaking his head.  With that he turns around and sticks a tape in the tape player.

“Hey Gary, we’ve got something we want to try out on you.  They’re some songs that we did with another guy on the ship,” Sam says, “you might know him.  He’s a topsider like you, most people just call him Hindy.”

Gary makes a facial shrug and says, “Doesn’t sound to familiar.”

“Well here it goes anyway.”

“Just think of yourself as an audio crash test dummy,” Mark adds.

Looking up from where he is sitting on the floor Gary asks, “Are you guys musicians?”

“Yea, I suppose so, we like to play and I’ve got a little studio set up in my room at the house I’m staying in,” Mark answers.

 

At this point I think it is worth while to take a few minutes to talk about the songs they played for their unsuspecting guest.  Those readers with absolutely no musical inclination may want to skip ahead.  To start with, the equipment Mark had was archaic by today’s standards, which is not saying a whole lot in the music biz.  The studio consisted of  an early digital synth, a old drum machine, a reverb unit, and a 4 track recorder (and a second hand guitar).  All the rhythms were programmed.  It just was not feasible to try and work with a real drummer.  The navy lifestyle required portability.  Sam had a pretty nice electric guitar and some pedals, and Hindy, the other guy they played with, had a nice acoustic guitar with a built in pickup.  All the sound went through a Radio Shack 5 channel mixer and came out through two small powered speakers.  There were no amps.  It was far from being the ideal recording situation, but it worked!  Stylistically the three of them had very little in common except that they all appreciated good music (in this case good is a quality issue, not a quantity issue).  Sam liked Heavy Metal, with lots of screaming guitars and whammy bar pyrotechnics.  Hindy liked New Age acoustic stylings.  Mark liked alternative, cutting edge type stuff, the more out of the norm the better.  About the only thing they all had one thing in common was they liked music.  Mostly when they played they would just tinker around trying out different things but occasionally, and usually well after midnight, they would record a song on the 4 track, and that is what they were about to play for Gary.  Only three songs all totaled: Metal Mosque, Midnight Milk And Cookies, and Tin Soldier II.  Metal Mosque started with an eerie sounding recorder (you know that wood thing that’s like a flute) that sounded like it was being played in an enormous underground cavern.  It then meandered around a certain base note microtonally.  Add to that the sound of a mic being scraped on the inside of a sauce pan and deep undulating synth sounds.  Then the recorder gave way to a screaming electric guitar, also being played in a huge underground cavern.  Finally over top of it all was a vocal part, barely recognizable as human.  Midnight Milk And Cookies was a melodic New Age bit with complimentary acoustic and electric guitar melodies, a background synth part and some soft drum rhythms.  Tin Soldier II was basically four variations on a theme embellished with drums, synth, acoustic and electric guitar parts, culminating in an excellent dual guitar solo.

 

Gary isn’t quite sure what to think.  He isn’t really into music and he likes the easy rock-soul sound de-jour, mainly because it is so mainstream and unobtrusive.

“So you guys did this at your house huh?” Gary asks, not too enthusiastically.  “It’s good but it’s not really the kind of music I’m into.  Do you guys spend a lot of time doing this?”

Mark and Sam both conclude that this is quite possibly a trap and decided not to answer.

“I like music you can meditate to,” says Gary, “have either of you guys ever tried yoga?”

“No,” Mark replies, “isn’t that where you fold yourself up into different positions and then sit around?”  Mark has very little idea really what yoga is but he wants to keep the conversation going, just to see what will happen.

“I’ve had yogurt before,” interjects Sam.

Feeling that this is not helpful, Mark tries a blatantly leading question.  “Are you interested in yoga?”

“Yea, there’s a gym near here where they have yoga classes three times a week.  It’s really very relaxing and it totally clears the mind.  It makes you at peace with everything and makes you much more aware of your surroundings.”

Gary, who up until now was begging to seem like a terminally dull yet nice person is actually showing some signs of emotion as he speaks.  This seemed worth investigating.

“So how long does it take to yoga usually?” Mark asks.

“Well, I usually try to spend about 10 minutes in each position, but we have to do a lot of stretching first and then we have a warm down.  So all total I usually spend about an hour, maybe an hour and a half, actually practicing yoga.  Some people who’ve been doing it for a while can get into some really good positions but I’m mainly working on the basic stuff right now.”

“Huh,” Mark responds most intelligently.  “Hey, Pink Floyd is good music to meditate to,” and then turning to Sam, “Put on that Dark Side of the Moon CD.”

“Yea, good idea,” he replies pulling the appropriate CD out of his case and putting it in his player.  In this way, what would surely have become several moments of awkward silence are instead filled with the aural excellence of Pink Floyd.  Mark and Sam proceeded to sing along with Comfortably Numb.  Gary does not fell that this is good music for meditating.  Or at least not for the kind of meditation he is talking about.  After listening to Pink Floyd, and several guitar instrumentalists it becomes time to go get in line for lunch.  By getting in line early it only takes them about 20 minutes to get through, once it starts moving. 

 

Waiting in lines was an important part of navy life.  One could spend the whole day waiting in lines if one really desperately wanted to avoid work.  In fact this was common ploy among skaters.  You could wait in line at medical, or at disbursing, or even at the coke machine.   

 

Lunch consists of beef goo and rice, and thrice reheated green (greenish) beans.  All in all not bad. 

After lunch has ended the usual hustle and bustle begin.  The mess cranks are all busy cleaning up from lunch.  The mess cooks are already breaking out stores for the next meal.  Mark and Sam now set out to find the man in charge of it all.  The man who organizes the feeding of over 700 people three and a half times a day.  He also handles the procurement of food and the complicated logistics involved in supplying a ship at sea with adequate provisions.  He would have to be a very busy man to keep all these things under control, a pretty sharp guy too.  This is the kind of man they are looking for and this is definitely not the kind of man they find.  After several questions and a search that leads them to many disparate parts of the ship they find him, Chief Barrion, a native of the Philippine Islands, not far from where they had started.

 

Some explanation is needed here.  One of the largest bases the navy has (or had) outside the U.S. is Subic Bay in the Philippine Islands (P.I.).  By the time you read this it will no longer exist so I will continue in the past tense.  This relationship between the U.S. and the P.I. was most beneficial to everyone, except that the U.S. really had the better half of the deal.  Strategically Subic Bay was important, but it was also most equitable.  P.I. is still to this day a rather poor and underdeveloped country.  The navy found that they could train the natives to do much of the work needed to help maintain the fleet and save a good deal of money by not having to pay Americans citizens, or station more navy personnel.  As a result of this an entire town popped up outside the gates of the base which was totally dependent on the shipyard, and the American sailors.  Entertaining sailors became a whole second industry, much of which was based on the fact that some of the things prohibited by law in much of the U.S. were, in Alongapo, totally legal.  Starting back in WW2, Filipinos were allowed to enlist in the navy, but only in unskilled rates like Mess Specialist.  By the time Mark got to the Truxtun, many of these Filipino MS’s had had sufficient time to rise up to the ranks of Chiefdom.  And finally, why does the country’s name start with ‘Ph’ and the nationality start with ‘F’?

 

They  find the chief sitting in the first class mess, a little area separated from the main dining area, smoking a cigarette and joking with some 1st class petty officers.  He has some menu planning sheets out on the table in front of him to make it look like he is busy.  Before they can speak with him a 1st class MS comes up and asked him some questions.  It goes something like this.

“Chief, we’re running short on spoons, and one of the slop transmorgafiers is frabulating again.  We’re gonna need to requisition some stuff and I’ll have to put Schneider on it and then send Williams up to the captains mess ‘till we get those new guys we were expecting in Honolulu,” he said.

“OK, you know what to do so you handle it, OK.  Make sure dose salt shaker get fill.  Da XO was all over my ass now,” replies Chief Barrion.  With that he appears to be finished because he leans forward and turns his attention to the papers in front of him.  The 1st class leaves.  Mark and Sam approach.  The Chief pretends not to notice.

“Chief Barrion, we’re assigned to work down in the Chiefs Mess and we were wondering if there was an MS who was going to be coming down there today to help get things ready,” Mark says.

“You have to repote down dere, you talk to Chiefs down in da Chiefs Mess OK,” replies Chief Barrion without looking up.

“We’ve already checked in, we’re supposed to start serving the Chiefs tomorrow, and we have no idea when we’re supposed to get here or what we’re supposed to do,” Mark continues undaunted.

“Make sure dey have catsup and talk to Dunberg about some ice crem.  Do you know where the napkins are?” asks Barrion.

“No,” replies Mark.  Sam shrugs.  At this point Barrion gets up and moved closer to them.

“Don werwy, where is your berthing?”

“M-Div, but we don’t stay on the ship,” Mark answers.

Chief Barrion seems annoyed by this.  He looks away as if to say they have completely missed the point of his question.  This seemed totally consistent to them because they have the feeling that they have missed the point of the whole conversation.

“OK, go now talk to firs class Smid, he has napkins,” replies Barrion while pointing to the door with one hand.  With that he sits back down and hovers over his papers.  The conversation has clearly come to an end.  Mark and Sam leave, both relieved to be going but more confused than ever.  They have no idea who “firs class Smid” is.  Just the same they have developed a certain admiration for Chief Barrion.

“So did you understand any of that?” Mark asks.

“No, not a thing, I don’t think he has any idea of what’s going on here,” answers Sam.

“Or maybe he knows, and he just wants us to think he doesn’t,” Mark suggests.

“Absolutely amazing, the man managed to not answer a single question and yet keep us so confused that we weren’t sure if he had or not,” Sam continues, “It’s brilliant in fact, the man is in charge of all the enlisted food service personnel and yet he actually runs nothing at all.”

“Oh yea?” replies Mark rather skeptically, “So what are we going to do now?”

“Go hang out in the Chiefs Mess until it’s time to go home.  It’s not our problem,” Sam answers. 

 

He had an excellent point there.  They were no longer responsible, and in the navy you never take responsibility for something you don’t absolutely have to.  Unless of course you have great ambitions and think that ‘Go Navy’ is a good career move.

 

“Sounds like a plan,” Mark replies nonchalantly as they both start off towards the Chief’s Mess.

When they arrive they find a Second Class MS busily getting things ready.  Gary is there helping out and soon Mark and Sam are being given instructions on what to do.  The MS explains some of the workings and the work schedule.

MS, “While we’re in port there aren’t many Chiefs that stay for dinner, so you don’t all need to be here in the evening.  Tomorrow I need you all  but after that we can work out some kind of rotation.  Who ever is here, though, you can’t leave until their has been an inspection.  So you have to completely clean out the galley, Chief’s Mess and lounge before you can go.”

Gary, “Will we be using the dishwasher?”

MS, “No, its broken.  Anyway its just a pain in the ass.  Its slow and you have to clean it before you can go if you use it.

  A little later Starcher shows up again.  By 4 o’clock everything is ready, the Chief’s Mess is actually going to serve food.

 

After a couple of days they had all got the schedule figured out.  On one day Mark and Sam worked a long day, the next day they didn’t.  It was a fairly uncomplicated situation.  On their long day they would have to be there to set up for breakfast and would then would stay there until the evening inspection was over.  On their short day they would arrive in time to serve breakfast and would then leave after lunch was done.  Serving consisted mainly of filling glasses and putting large plates of food on the table, pretty much a no brainer.  The toughest questions they were asked were things like, “Could I have some more milk?” and “Are there any more of those high sodium, cholesterol enriched, deep fat fried food substitute lumps back there?” 

Unlike most other jobs in the Navy this was the kind of job where the sooner you finished your work the sooner you were done.  Meaning that you could take a break or go home, and this was of course their goal, or maybe not.  It was pretty easy for Mark and Sam to get along when they were coolin’ it, skatin’, or just not doing much work in general.  But now this was a new thing, not only did they have to work, they had to work together.  It soon became apparent that Mark did not actually mind work when it was in his own best interest, while Sam, as far as the Navy was concerned, disapproved of doing work on principle.  So the result was something like this.

Mark: “Let’s get this place cleaned up quick so we can get out of here.”

Sam: No response, waits for Mark to start working, then joins in with slightly less enthusiasm.

CAUTION  Politically Incorrect topic follows!

Mark grew up in LA which has a very large Hispanic population, of which Sam was one.  Now I don’t know if its cultural or the result of being a minority (at that time they were still a minority) or the result of being around non-Hispanics, even call it coincidence if you want, but to me it seems like many of them have ego (no it’s not a toaster waffle) issues.  That isn’t necessarily bad when you’ve got a whole lot of Mexicans together who know how to relate to each other.  But when you take a highly analytical WASP person like Mark and make him work with a Hispanic like Sam, communication problems are inevitable.

Mark:   “There’s some water in the corner under the dishwasher that we’re going to have to clean up,” meaning why don’t you do that while I put these glasses away.

Sam:     Goes over to the dishwasher and peers into the corner.  “Yea, there is,” meaning it’s slimy back there, I don’t want to clean it up.

Mark:   “Why don’t you get a sponge or something and wipe it up so that when I’m finished here we can go,” wondering what went wrong the first time.  After all, Sam was a very intelligent person.

Sam:     “Why don’t you?” meaning you have no authority over me so if I clean it up I’ll be admitting I’m inferior to you.

Mark:   “Because I’m busy,” then realizing this had zero communication value, “here, you put the cups away and I’ll clean up the water.”  Mark is totally bewildered but can think of no other solution to the illogical impasse.

Sam:     No response, meaning if I don’t move I’ll have the upper hand.

Mark:   Grudgingly moves to clean up the water, meaning I’m really annoyed but I want to get out of here some time tonight.  Maybe if I make the first move he’ll be shamed into putting the glasses away.

Sam:     Slowly moves toward the glasses thinking, I’m not sure who got the upper hand on this one but I’ll put the glasses away so we can get out of here.

I personally find ego to be really tedious, but these are the kinds of things that happen when you get people of different backgrounds and cultures together into one homogeneous group and then leave them unsupervised. 

There exists in the world even yet today a vast amount of cultural diversity.  I believe some of that cultural diversity comes from racial diversity, which is to say that, yes, different races of people are different.  At about this point in the story there was a big argument in the US about desegregation.  Now days they don’t even want you to like one culture more than another.  Just think how dull the world will be when all the races have kind of blended into one.  Remember when you were a kid and you mixed all your colors of play dough together.  For a little while it looked really psychedelic and you thought “Hey, cool.” But soon it was all a very disappointing gray blob.  Bummer.  Makes me wish I had some pay dough.  .  So where is all this leading?  Certainly not toward nondescript unicultural existence.  Instead of expecting African Americans to like Caucasian culture, or Orientals to act like Hispanics culture etc . . . let’s just learn to respect and appreciate ethnic differences.  Racial integration is a much better concept, one that allows us to retain all the best of all the cultures represented in American society.   Now in the Navy none of this really applies, so you see it does relate to my story, because it does nothing what-so-ever to explain Navy life.  The Navy is in itself a separate culture.  One which is represented by no ethnic group whatsoever.  It is a culture without a people, a pseudoculture (whoa, pretty deep huh?).  Everyone who joins up is forced to conform to new cultural norms.

Now if you think, “Hey, that’s racist,” you would be right.  Webster defines racism as a belief or doctrine that cultural or individual achievement is determined by inherent differences among the various human races.  I believe there are indeed inherent differences.  So, in other words, racism merely implies the identification differences, and not judging those differences.  Its the enlightened self-righteous who have redefined to the word as a label for ‘bad’ people.  But I digress.
Chapter 6

 

West Pac 89’

 

Finally, the word was given, the time had come.  After three years in the navy and countless hours of training, he was going on a West Pac cruise. The name referring to the general oceanic area they would be cruzin about in.  This was the Tour de France of navy deployments.  Another six months at sea.  Half a year spent bobbing around on the briny waves minus 15 or 20 days in ports here and there.  The ship would be leaving on a certain date not long in the future. The ship had provided a schedule of various destinations and underway events.  Mark had made Xerox copies and sent them to relatives.  He posted one on the refrigerator.  Secretly, he thought the list of foreign ports sounded cool.  Exotic names in countries he’d never been to.  Surely this was the adventure part of the job.  Mark loved visiting new places; exploring cities for the first time.  In fact, he’d done a bit of that before joining the Navy, the details of which we not go into here.

Everyone was all abustle getting things ready, making last minute preparations.  Mark and his house mates packed all their belongings into boxes and stashed as much of what they might need, on the ship, as they could.  Mark and another Nuc rented a storage unit for the rest of their stuff and paid up for seven months.  He stuffed his pit with uniforms and other personal items, as had every other sailor on the ship.  One had to have a minimum of dress uniforms for inspections, and a good supply of working uniforms.  Mark managed to include about fifty CDs be taking them out of their cases, and putting them in Hallmark envelopes in a shoe box.  A friend in the disbursing dept. found some space where Mark and Sam could hide some music equipment.  Mark also hidden a keyboard in one of the fan rooms for which the engineering dept. was responsible.  The ship had these tiny rooms dispersed about the upper decks which contained only ducting, fan motors, and filters.  The maintenance of these little spaces was assigned to various divisions and periodically someone important like the XO would come by with a flashlight and note pad and inspect them.  Someone slightly less important, like a division officer or chief would stand by the little room until the very important person arrived, at which time the tiny little fan room would be “presented” for inspection.  The less important person would also take out his note pad and scribble something in it whenever the very important person did likewise.  The person who actually maintained the fan room was very unimportant to the inspectors, but very important to Mark.  Whenever an inspection was pending, the maintainer would inform Mark, who could then move the keyboard to temporary hiding in berthing.

Mark was fully expecting to be in the Chief’s Mess with Sam at the start of the cruise, but Retention Team operatives had observed that it was not beneficial for those two to be together, so at the last minute he was transferred back to T-Div.  A week went by and suddenly the ship was ready to hit the high seas.  Amidst the fervor of underway preparations was an undercurrent of excitement, a mixture of dread and anticipation.  On the pier people were scurrying back and forth performing various tasks to make ready for Tommy T’s eminent departure.

 

“Hey, Pressure.”  It is a senior mechanic.  “They need someone to help disconnect the shore power cables.  Go with Rogers there and tell ‘em your from T-Div.”

Mark nods as he heads off in Rogers direction.  Rogers, an electrician, is crossing the helo pad to a ladder, not far from where Mark has been watching all the commotion.  He follows him down to the fan tail, around the missile launcher, and toward the brow.  By the time Rogers reaches the brow Mark has almost caught up.  Workers from the shipyard are hooking cables, from a crane overhead, to the brows arm rails, in preparation for removing it.  Before Mark can get Rogers attention, he remembers that the quarterdeck watch is going to want to see his ID.  He stops and pulls out his navy ID and says, “Request permission to go ashore” while saluting with his other hand.  The watch salutes back and says, “permission granted.”  On the other side he catches up with Rogers.

“Hey, Rogers, I was told to help with the shore power cables.  I’m from T-Div.”

Rogers, who has stopped to look back at Mark replies, “Where’s the other one?”

“I don’t know.”  Mark shrugs.

“Have you done this before?”

“No”

“Right, well, follow me” Rogers replies, already heading off down the pier.

Up ahead is a group of sailors whom Mark recognizes from Engineering Department.  They are all holding on to large black cables, about four inches in diameter, which are being pulled up onto the ship by another group of sailors.  Mark grabs a hold and helps to life the heavy lack cables over the side of the pier.  The cable leaves black marks on his white uniform where ever it touches. 

 

Everyone was required to wear ‘whites’ if they were going to be outside the ‘skin’ of the ship on going away day.  ‘Whites’ were required on three occasions, leaving port, entering port, and whenever the Captain wanted everyone to be in their spiffy white uniforms.

 

Twenty minutes later the cables are gone, as are the communication lines, steam hoses, water hoses and waste water lines.  The only thing remaining are the mooring lines and the brow.  People are standing by to remove those as well.  Mark crosses back onto the ship with the rest of the last minute pier-side help, performing the identification and salutation ritual once again.  Heading back to his viewing spot, he watches the crane remove the last empirical connection between the ship and the shore.  The ship is underway and there is no escape.  He heads back down inside the ship.

 

            In the next week or so Mark finished his T-Div quals and was transferred to M-2 division.  But the very next day he was sent back to the decks for ‘crank’ duty in the wardroom.  The wardroom was where the officers all hung out.  It consisted of a TV lounge, a dining room and a galley.  Of course, when the word came down, Mark asked why, but the politics was all very confusing.  Logistically, this situation was not good.  The wardroom galley was three decks up from the Chief’s Mess which meant that rough seas were about three times worse up there.  The cabinet that held the plates had a faulty latch and would occasionally fly open allowing stacks of plates to begin rapid fire projectile ejection, and the water in the deep sinks would slosh out occasionally flooding everything with dish water.  Mark tried explaining that putting less water in the sink would prevent this, but that was futile.  His helper was a topside lifer and logic was of no use.  As I mentioned before the wardroom was where all the officers ate, minus the captain of course.  All their food was cooked in the wardroom galley and was placed on real dishware.  Truxtun dishware no less, and real silver.  The food was carried out on the plates and delivered to the khaki lifers in near restaurant style.  But the real clincher, the thing which made this dining experience really special, the thing that’s gonna make you run out and get a college degree and then join the Navy, they all got personalized napkin holders.  Every day their napkin holders, napkins neatly rolled within, would be taken out of a drawer and laid out on a table.  Then as each officer sat down his napkin would be brought to him.  The tricky part was getting to know all the officers names.  Mark quickly noticed a small flaw with this whole ritual, however.  The napkins never got washed.  They were just stuck back in the drawer at the end of the day.  Mark made a point to bring this to the attention of no one, and ironically, nothing was ever done about it.

The wardroom perks:

·        The wardroom cranks got to eat the same food as the officers.

·        The wardroom provided opportunities to brown nose with the officers.

The wardroom downers:

·        Projectile plates.

·        Having to avoid sexual harassment by the wardroom cook.

One day the Main Propulsion Assistant (MPA) came in late after lunch and wanted a chicken sandwich.  Mark was the only one in the galley so he reached in the cabinet and pulled out a plate, threw a bun on it, pulled a leftover chicken patty out of the garbage (OK it was on top) and slipped it into the bun, and then handed the plate out with a smile.  What service!  Made a good impression on a man he was likely to work for in the near future.

 

Chapter 7

 

Welcome to M-Div

After the reading of the POD, Leading Petty Office Baumire says “We have a new mechanic in M-2 division today,” pointing, “this is Petty Officer Groseth.  Welcome to M-2 Division.”  The LPO is standing at a metal desk that has been welded to the hull sort of behind some switch gear.  He is on the mid-level of the Two Plant.  The engine rooms have 3 decks, upper-level, mid-level, and lower level.  M-2 holds quarters on the mid-level by the switch gear.  “See me after and I’ll show your cleaning area.  Talk to the our Training Petty Officer and he’ll start you on you watch qualification curves.”

 

Mark had finally arrived.  T-Div was over, mess cranking was over, mechanical division had begun.  M-2 consisted of a Division Officer, a Chief, an LPO, and about 10 other enlisted personnel.  All the Nuc divisions were part of Engineering which was overseen by the MPA (Main Propulsion Assistant) and the Engineer.  The ship had a new Engineer who was not insane and was even a marginally OK guy, unless he got mad and then he tried to kill you.  Engineering was one of the main divisions of the ship along with Operations, Combat etc. and these were all overseen by the XO (Executive Officer) and the CO (Commanding Officer) or Captain.  The XO and CO never went into the engine room.  They didn’t want their creases to get steamed out. 

 

This whole thing I have just described is called the Chain-O-Command.  For Mark the chain of command went like this from bottom to top: nobody - Mark – LPO – Division Chief – Division Officer – MPA – Engineer – XO – CO – The-Big-Wigs.  The chain of command obeys the laws of physics.  Things don’t go up very far, unless you’re in big trouble.  Things usual come down all the way to the bottom, and they pick up momentum on the way.  Now in theory, there is supposed to be a filter effect on the way down.

Example 1: XO to Engineer, “This @$&) ship is a (#)$ dam !^& mess.  3 days from now I’m going down to the engine room and it had better #&^@ be spotless or I’m going to rip you a new ()*&#!!!”  Then quarters the next day LPO would say, “Over the next couple days I need you to focus on cleaning your areas a little more.  Put off your PMS if you have to, I’ll have the TPO extend your qual curves a little.”

Instead what usually happens is an amplifying effect.

Example 2: XO to Engineer, “Nice day, things sure do get dusty fast here in the Gulf…blah, blah…I’ll stop by the engine room on Thursday and drop that off for you.”  Then at quarters the next day the LPO would say, “This @$&) engine room is a (#)$ dam !^& mess.  3 days from now the XO is going to be down here to inspect each and every area and it had better be #&^@ spotless or I’m going to rip you a new ()*&#!!!”

So there, in a nut shell, is the difference between good leaders and bad leaders.  The good leaders are ‘shit filters’, and the bad leaders are ‘shit amplifiers’.  The former are respected by their underlings (except for the whiners), and the later are generally despised (except by the smarmy).

When you are on the bottom of the chain of command, it is difficult so see the ultimate plan, the big picture.  As you may know, it is not the military way to explain why.  Explanations only go up the chain of command.  Orders go down.  So when you’re on the top there is some grand plan.  When you’re on the bottom, shit happens!

 

The Plan

 

·        In the beginning was the Plan.

·        And then came the Assumptions.

·        And the assumptions were without form.

·        And the Plan was without substance.

·        And the darkness was upon the face of the workers.

·        And they spoke amongst themselves saying, “It is a crook of shit and it stinketh.”

·        And the workers went unto their Division Chiefs, saying, “It’s a pail of dung and none may abide the odor thereof.”

·        And the Division Chiefs went unto their Division Offices, saying, “It is a container of excrement and it is very strong, such that none may abide by it.”

·        And the Division Officers went unto their Principle Assistants, saying, “It is a vessel of fertilizer and none may abide by its strength.”

·        And the Principle Assistants then went to the Executive Officer, saying unto him, “It promotes growth and it is very powerful.”

·        And the Executive Officer went unto the Captain, saying unto him, “This new plan will actively promote the growth and vigor of the ship and crew, with powerful effects.”

·        And the Captain looked upon the Plan and saw that it was good.

·        And the Plan became policy.

·        This is how shit happens.

 

Of the 15 or so people that made up M-2, non of them were Paul, or Pits, or Spunky Bob.  They had gone to M-1 division.  Mark and Paul wanted to be in the same division but that’s not how it went down.

Mark and Paul are in the T-Div studying and talking to the other people there.  The LPO from One Plant enters.  He is chatting with TPO, which we can hear some of.

“I need some more mechanics, what have you got?”

“We’ve got three who are about to qualify, and a couple more in about two months,” the TPO responds.  “Two plant needs a couple of guys too.  These two here are about 90% done,” and he points to Mark and Paul.

The LPO looks at them and says “How is your qualifications coming along?”

“Fine,” says Mark.

“Great,” says Paul.

They exchange some details.  The LPO is pretty amiable.

“What plant do you guys want to go to?” the LPO asks.

“One Plant,” says Paul.

“One Plant,” says Mark.

They talk a little more.

“Well hurry up and get done with those quals caus’ I need a couple mechanics,” says the LPO.

Mark replies, “hey, don’t stress me man,” as a joke.

 

Now right about this time Spunky Bob had been getting a little crazy in the head.  In fact his nick-name had changed from Spunky Bob to Psycho Bob.  And the last thing the LPO wanted was another mental case.  So these three innocent words “don’t stress me” sealed Mark’s fate, he was NOT going to One Plant.  So now he would have to make new friends.

At this point in the story a little diagram of the engine room would be nice, but then I’d have to kill you.  Besides, its not interesting.  So back to the story.  The ship is at sea on a West Pac cruise.  That’s six months of sea time with a variety of sleep-overs in foreign countries, oh, except Hawaii is not actually foreign.  West Pac is short for West Pacific, which is where the Truxtun spent a lot of its time.  Truxtun was part of the Pacific fleet, I think.  Our fleet had a number but it was irrelevant since we almost never saw them.  The Truxtun spent most of its time in the South Pacific “Bali high, calls you” and the Indian Ocean.  But at this time the ship was in Honolulu taking on stores.  ORSE was over and West Pac was getting ready to begin in earnest.  Mark was making new friends, sort of. 

 

There’s not a lot of dialog to follow because the main underlying theme of a West Pac cruise is monotony.  Let me see if I can describe an average day at sea.

The normal schedule went like this:

6:00     Revilee, Breakfast, Sweepers

7:30     Quarters: POD, work assignments.

8:00     Work day begins.  Perform scheduled maintenance.  Clean everything.  Qualify new watches.  Make repairs.

11:45   Lunch

13:00   Back to work.  Perform scheduled maintenance.  Clean everything.  Qualify new watches.  Make repairs.

17:30   Dinner

Each watchstander had an area of the engine room which he was assigned to clean.  In the navy cleaning includes painting.  Every mechanic quickly learns that paint is the easiest way to make something look clean!  That’s why most surfaces in the engine room had about 3000 coats of paint.  In fact, you could learn the history of a piece of equipment by looking at a paint chip.  Its like tree rings… “I see here that this pump was once painter red back in 1973…”  Everything had it’s own color, depending on what it did, but the color regs changed once in a while.  There were places where paint was the only thing holding equipment together.

Each watchstander had to do PMS (Preventative Maintenance System).  There was a ‘PMS cycle’ in which every piece of equipment, every valve, every inch of pipe had maintenance done on it.  PMS was assigned on a weekly schedule.  You would check the schedule and find code numbers for the PMS you were to do that week.  Then you would go to the PMS catalog and pull cards for each code.  The card might have a list of valves that you just had to wire brush and lubricate, or it might have you checking bearing clearances on a two story turbine generator.  If the PMS had you removing insulation, you had to reinstall it when you were done.  The PMS card had a list of tools, half of which were available.  To keep everyone on their toes the engineer did random PMS spot checks.

PMS was responsible for about half the repair work that was done.  You might have to a gasket in a pipe joint and it is working fine, no leaks.  Then you have this PMS item that required you to disassemble that pipe joint and replace the gasket.  Of course, you weren’t the first person to do this because the PMS cycle has this item come up every 6 months.  This has been going on for 20 years, so that pipe joint has been disassembled 40 times.  As result the bolts are now stripped and the flanges are scratched.  No amount of gaskets are going to keep that thing from leaking now.

 

To give a better feel for the extent of naval PMS I will use a analogy.  Suppose that you are the Navy and you have bought a car.

NOTE TO SELF: CAR DESCRIPTION HERE

 

 

Then add in the watches.  All the mechanics were on three section rotation, which means you stood every third watch, which would go something like this:

Monday           7am – 12pm

                        10pm – 3am (mid watch)

Tuesday           12pm – 5pm

Wednesday      3am – 7am

                        5pm – 10pm

Basically its 5 out of every 15 hours.  That leaves one night in three when you could get a full nights sleep, maybe.  While you were on watch you could not leave your watch station, but you could perform limited maintenance, cleaning, and qualify new watches.  Unless you were running drills.  Engine room drills or, ‘drill sets,’ were run periodically on the 7 to 12, 12 to 5, and the 5 to 10 watches.  Drills involved anyone in the engine room, regardless of what you’re working on, and about 30% of the time, all off watch mechanics would have to respond as well. 

There were also the occasional ship wide drills, “Battle Stations, Battle Stations…”  Once we ran a ship wide drill scenario in which Green Peace was trying to get onto the ship.  In fact we ran it several times.  Like anyone would WANT to get onto this ship.

Then there was training.  Periodically, T-Div would give training and administer tests during working hours.  If you failed a test or fell behind in qualifications you had to put in extra hours.

Then there was the divisional sweats.  If the Engineer or Division Officer or the Chief or even the LPO got a hair up his ass he could call any or all the off watch mechanics down to the engine room, anytime of day or night, for spontaneous field day.

Finally, there was equipment repair.  The Truxtun was an old ship and things broke.  Broken stuff often required many man hours for fixing.

In spite of all this, people found time for recreation.  You had to find time for recreation or you’d go nuts, and people did go nuts.  After about 5 days at sea everyone was undergoing sleep deprivation, and their personalities changed.  It’s like how everyone has a drunk personality, everyone also has a sleep deprivation personality.  In the navy you got to know both of these for just about everyone you worked with.

 

In port was a good place to get to see your shipmates drunk personality.  Getting drunk was a major pass time in port and for good reason.  It’s not like you really had time to make plans for anything else.  Nucs still had to stand watches and duty days in port, and the odds were that your friends were going to be on watch or duty while you were on liberty.  Sometimes you didn’t even see your friends will you were at sea, and the ship was not that big.  It was all you could do to agree on a place to meet up and get drunk.  In Honolulu that place was usually Moose MacGilicudies (sp?).  For an extra buck they would super-size your drink.  They often had a live band and dancing.  The good looking guys could pick up chics.

One of the first friends Mark made in M-2 was Sticky, also know as Rich Hafner.  Sticky had got to M-2 a couple/few months before Mark.  Sticky was an obnoxious drunk.  No one seemed to remember why we called him Sticky.  There were a lot of other characters in M-2.  Monty, Eric ‘The Hands’ Hansen, Trad, Freddy Krugger…  Monty was pretty senor and was also the nicest guy in the division.  Monty shows up a lot later in the story.  Eric and Trad were goof-offs.  Eric was just about a musical prodigy, but lacked the motivation to do much of anything.  Trad was the funniest person I’ve ever met and most likely to overdose and/or spend time in jail.  Freddy was dangerous but good natured.  When Freddy got drunk, someone got hurt, but it wasn’t personal.  There were some guys who were less interesting.  There was the two pretty boys who were incredibly self-absorbed and not very nice.  And there was a couple of married guys who were whipped.  It all seems a little larger than life in retrospect.  It’s the kind of thing that can only happen when you put a bunch of guys together in a highly stressful situation.

At the end of 89 the whole motley crew headed out from Pear Harbor for the wide open ocean.  Thus began Mark’s watch station qualification period.

 

Feed Pump Watch:  This was the first underway watch Mark qualified.  It was the easiest watch.  The watch station was limited to the forward half of lower level.  It was also boring as hell.  Because of the limited area, he couldn’t go far.  He also could clean his cleaning area or work on his assigned preventative maintenance.  Feed Pump watch was all about starting and stopping feed pumps, and feed boaster pumps.  Feed pumps pushed water into the steam generators as part of the secondary system.  The steam generators were heated by the hot water in the primary system.  Never did the primary and secondary water come in direct contact.  To see why this is a good idea see my Chernobyl Simulator.

Roving Watch:  This was a ‘shut-down’ watch which means it was only manned when the engine room was shut down.  The “Rover” was in charge of keeping an eye on things, pumping out bilges, checking water and steam supplies, taking readings etc.  This was a very cool watch because you could go anywhere (more or less) on the ship.

Charging Station Watch:  This watch was in charge of the pumps that were used to add water to the primary to control primary pressure and reactor water level.  The charging station watch was manned as needed, usually while shutting down or starting up.  You couldn’t leave the charging station. 

Turbine Generator Watch/Distilling Unit:  This was, by far, the worst watch.  The TG watch was in charge of two low tech 1000kw steam turbine generators, and the distilling unit.  Lots of logs.  As a rough guess I’d say you had to record about 50 readings an hour.  There were probably 300 different valves, switches and gauges involved in running these pieces of equipment.  The distilling unit was especially needy.  You had to keep an eye on it.  The two distilling units on the ship produced barely enough water to supply all the ships needs so you had to keep them running at peak efficiency.  The distilling unit’s output was delivered into the three ‘pot’ water tanks on the ship.  These tanks had no reliable indication of how full they were, and if they were overfilled, they spilled over right into the main p-ways of the ship.  Clever design!  If you over filled a tank then some poor off-watch nub got to go clean up the mess.  Sam, by-the-way, was known as the Pot Water King because he had overflowed the tanks so many times. 

3SS:  The 3 refers to a spare turbine generator know an Number Three Ship Service Turbine Generator.  The ship had five, two in each engine room and the spare.  I forget why we had a spare.  In fact I was probably required to forget when I left the navy.  This watch was boring because the 3SS was in its own rather cramped three story room, and the watch couldn’t leave.

ReBoiler: 

Auxiliary Boiler: 

Engine Room Supervisor: 

 

After leaving Pear Harbor the ship headed, in a round about way, to the P.I.  In Pearl the ship had picked up a shipload (slang for a lot) of jalapenos (pronounced jel-op-en-Os), and suddenly many traditional navy recipes began to have jalapenos as a major ingredient.  They had jalapeno lasagna and jalapeno sloppy-joes, and jalapeno chili etc…  Coincidentally, the ship’s supply of toilet paper was running low at the time.  There was a fleet wide shortage.  Because of this, the jalapenos were really adding spice to people’s lives (sorry about that) in more ways than one.

On Sundays hamburgers were grilled on the helo deck if the weather was clear, and it usually was.  On holidays there was usually a special menu.  Sometimes it was pretty good.

 

Shrimp Surprise

 

“Mmmm…” did somebody say “shrimp”?  Those tasty little morsels of sea food often accompanied by the words “All you can eat!”  Now for only 8.99 @ Allies, 7.99 @ Sizzler, FREE on board the USS Truxtun!!  “Would someone please pass me a chisel?”  “Careful, you’ll break the tray.”  I figure this is a small set back for a shrimp lover.  I’ll break the coating off and pretend they’re small Jumbo shrimp, but Jumbo shrimp could never be this chewy, not even after a half hour in the deep fat fryer.  Not even if they were really old chucka-boot shoe leather (do you know where your boots are?).  Next time you here the word “shrimp” do yourself a flavor and shell out the clams for a real meal the next time you’re in port.

 

At the head of the chow line in the crew’s mess there was a menu board.  The board was a great source of amusement for Mark, because the people who maintained it didn’t have a spell checker and often didn’t have enough letters.

The scene is Mark in the chow line at the first station on the serving line.

“I’d like the chippy beef please?” Mark asks.

“What?” asks the server.

“The chippy beef?” Mark asks.  Then to prevent an endless loop he add a gesture, pointing to the sign.  “There, it says chippe beef.”

“Its chipped beef!  We ran out of ‘d’s.  Do you want some or not!?” the server answers angrily.

Mark receives some chopped bologna in a pasty gravy which is supposed to be chipped beef.  Then he moves to the next station.

“Could I have some pudding?” he asks.

“We’re out of pudding” the server responds.

“How can you be out of pudding, dinner just started 20 minutes ago?” Mark asks.

“We’re out of pudding” the server responds.

This is a typical chow line experience.

 

The ship traveled from the P.I. to Singapore and then Hong Kong.

West Pac 89 visited the P.I., Singapore, Hong Kong, Diego Garcia, Jebal Ali, Abu Dabie, to name a few.

 

 

 

 

Band names: 10 Inch Nails, Faster Puppy, U235, Lines and Circles, Big Silver Box, Small Audio Snap Caps, Flock of Pigeons, White Noise,

 

 

Mojo: ½ pint rum, ½ pint cherry brandy, 1 beer, 1 coke, 1 orange, 1 7-up, ½ big glass of pineapple juice.

 

Things go bad in TDIV – Trouble in paradise

 

Work load keeps increasing.

 

Eric and I tried to drive around Oahu in 91

Kuchman – stayed on the beach by

 

Who’s the guy that Trad would argue with, that lives in Florida

Brent Thomas, who tried to get out of a sub

The guy who’s house I went to in Pasadena.  And I got his shoes.

Sticky – riding a Harley around the country doing radcon

Eric - work for a power company in Fresno and studying to become a chef.

Sam – living in a garage off of periodic band gigs, still looking for that break through band.

Chris – Boiler inspector in Hawaii.

Paul – married his high school honey and moved back to Wisconsin

Monty – is a chef in Seattle

Greg DeWitt drummer tried to start a ska band in the bay area.

Ron – moved back to the south

Bruce Payne – lived in a box car in Virginia and became a diving instructor and a Quality Assurance ISO 9000 inspector, has 4 kids.  Did he get out before me?  When did he come to the ship?

 

Lighting off 3ss

 

Lube oil rupture

 

 

Did sticky re-enlist?  Did Eric?

 

THIS IS  A NEW CHAPTER WEST PAC 91

 

 

Stress is a condition which arises when the things we should do, and the things we want to do, and the things we have to do conflict with each other.  I don’t mean to say that this is the sole cause of stress in the universe but merely the one source which is most applicable to the main character’s situation.  What Mark felt he should do, in most cases, was his best regardless of the circumstances.  What he wanted to do though was very little.  What he must do was everything he was told to do by anyone with a higher rank than his, and there were a lot of them.  In the end there had to be some sort of compromise, you see, so usually what happened was he tried to do a good job regardless of the task given to him, but he also tried to avoid being given any tasks to begin with.  In fact his motto was “If you don’t look for me I won’t hide from you.”  He even went to the trouble to have a T-shirt made up with those very words printed across the front and the phrase ‘Don’t stress me’ printed in big red letters on the back.  On Sundays at sea, when they were allowed to be out of uniform (meaning they could wear normal cloths) he would wear that T-shirt as he went about the ship in hopes that some people might read it and begin to think that he was a little unstable.   In spite of this his superiors all considered him to be a good worker because once he was given a job to do he didn’t require any further supervision.  Anyone who’s had to employ people can tell you that means a lot.  In short, he liked to be left alone to do his work.  He was a good worker who lacked initiative.  The latter remark was do to the fact that once he finished his job he didn’t go looking for any others.  And why not, after all his goal was to finish his work not see how much work he could do.  It’s not as if anyone ever actually accomplished anything in the Navy, unless of course you’re a captain or admiral.  And there was always someone telling him what to do regardless of what he’d all ready done. The Navy is the perfect place for someone who completely lacks direction in life, because people are always telling you where to go.

Mark’s superiors had mixed emotions though in regards to this attitude.  He was always respectful even though he might not think it was deserved.  It was his job to be respectful to anyone with higher rank than himself.  And in keeping with these requirements, he would listen to what he was told to do and how he was to supposedly do it, and then go do the job in whatever manner he thought best.  Respect consisted of polite acknowledgment but did not require agreement.  Those of you who have never had the pleasure of working for the military may not see any conflict there.  But in the military people are not only supposed to do exactly what they are told how they are told, when they are told, but they are also expected to believe what they are told.  Mark always had a major problem with that concept.  In fact, a good number of people had a problem with this.  As time went on Mark would see some who once questioned become like those who did not, and on occasion those who believed unquestioningly would begin to question again.  The fact remains that Mark was something of a free thinker,  and because of this very point his superiors sometimes had trouble writing up his performance evaluation.

 

“Hey Chief, how are those evals coming?  They’re due in another week and I still have to review them you know,” says the division officer.

“The evals are about 80% done.  I have a few questions though.”

“About the scores, or the remarks?”

“Some of both actually, for instance this guy here, Pressure.  He’s a pretty good worker.  He does a good job and I haven’t really ever had to get in his face about anything...”

“So what’s the problem then?” the officer interrupts.

“...Well, he gets things done but he doesn’t always do them the way he’s supposed to, and he never goes out of his way to find work to do.  What’s more he’s respectful and all but at the same time a little.., subversive.”

At this the officers ears begin to turn red.  He leaps from his seat and shouts, “Well have him shot immediately.”

“Sir, uh, I don’t think that would be such a good idea.”

“Why not? I’m in charge here!” the officer demands.

“It’s just that, we really can’t afford to loss any more mechanics right now sir.”

 

Which was absolutely true.  By ‘mechanics’ he was referring to nuclear trained machinist mates, and it takes about a year and a half from the time a mechanic gets to the ship to the time he becomes fully qualified for all engine room watches.  But let us return to the story at hand.  Before long the ship would be going out for six months and she would need a full complement of trained sailors to complete the cruise successfully.  All ready they had lost several mechanics to various maladies and calamities.  Various medical problems had put a couple mechanics out of service for a while and a couple others had been recently received a psych discharged, the modern equivalent to the ‘section 8’.  Still more had reached their EAOS (End of Active Obligated Service) and then parted ways with the Navy in the last few months.  All in all they were short handed.

Fortunately, M-2 had picked up a new guy.  His name was Bruce.  Now, Mark preferred to think of himself as a realistic idealist, which is to say that while he recognized how things ought to be, he also realized that in most cases things would never really be as they ought to be.  Bruce had trouble accepting that.  But even more significant, and rare too I might add (and then again I might not)...is that he was a man of moral conviction.  This is rare because the military doesn't go out of it's way to cultivate a feeling of moral responsibility among the troops.  Otherwise when it came time to rape and pillage or even just attack fiercely those whom we wished to conquer or subject, the troops might object.  Traditionally militaries liked having ruthless amoral automatons, it was scarier for the 'bad' guys that way.  Now days standards of conduct are finding themselves under greater scrutiny all the time.  But the moral pressures have always come from the private sector.  Military authorities only impose moral standards because they are forced to and not out of a general sense of goodness.  In order to stay in business (in a democracy) a military must not only be able to win it’s battles, but also satisfy the civilians who support it. "Why, uncle Mark, do you mean to say that those recruiting commercials about honor and duty are completely bogus?"  Not at all, just keep in mind that qualities like honor and dignity, or duty and integrity are relative.  The Navy is more interested in quantity than qualities I suppose.  Anyway, Bruce was destined to be a 'sea lawyer' from the very start.  'Sea lawyer' is a term spoken with disdain by those higher up the chain-o-command.  It is a term used to describe someone who stands up for his rights and the rights of others.  In other words, a trouble maker.

In any case, it was inevitable that Mark and Bruce would become friends.  Bruce was funny, had a good attitude, and some morals.  Mark and Sticky were friends, but they never were really good friends because they were just to different.  So this was a definite improvement.   

 

 

 

 

What’s up with boots in the navy.  And slipper tile floors?

 

The house

 

Taxiera

 

Big bird

 

The bitch book

 

 

 

It's now been four months since I was a lowly sailor in the navy, and sure enough, civilian life really is as good as I thought it would be.  Yes the grass truly is greener on this side of the fence.  Now you may be saying, "That's fine for you because you have wonderful wife who is also a chemical engineer."  Well it's true, I have a wonderful wife, but if you're the least bit skeptical just ask Scamin Sam or Ron Alexander who are also currently enjoying the benefits of our generous government (generous to civilians that is).  My resting heart rate has dropped 10 BPM and my blood pressure is down by about 20 points.  For me stress is having to decide whether or not to get dressed in the morning.

            It's now been 5 months and 27 day(s) since I was last underway.  Land is such a wonderful thing!  It doesn't move (unless you're in So Cal), I really like that part.  So many good things are on land; restaurants, malls, nightclubs, lots of people, women, plants just to name a few.

            Here's an interesting bit of mass behavioral pathology for you navy types.  Sleep is something that most people do on a regular basis.  Every night!  And at the same time every night.  I mean periods of continues sleep in excess of seven hour.  Last week I stayed up late and only got five hours of sleep, I was grumpy and miserable all the next day and the best part is people actually felt sorry for me.  I've nearly convinced myself that my navy days were just a bad dream but I haven't quite worked out why I was asleep for six years.

            I've discovered that hair is pretty nice, it keeps the head warm which is handy up here, it feels nice and it looks good to.  And sneakers are really cool too, I wear them everywhere now.

 

 

Chrono notes

87        NY      prototype, flooding school

88        SD       firefighting school

89        yards

89        west pac

91        west pac, CBR school, Christmas in Bahrain

92        LEO, march wedding, nov EOS