THERE IS STILL TIME TO CREATE A FEW MORE HAZY MEMORIES BEFORE WE LEAVE...
CHAPTER THIRTY:
A SECOND COLLECTION OF MEMORIES (1989-90)
SN Peterson in 1st Division berthing - 1989
Our return to the Long Beach Naval Station was a very
welcome one. It was nice to be back with
the rest of the “regular” Navy, and to be closer to the action on base. We picked up right where we left off, with
regular visits to the base club and to Jack’s liquors downtown. There had been a bunch of new guys come on
board right before our stint in the yards, so those of us who had been onboard
during Pac of '88 were actually moving up the seniority ladder, and weren’t
called “booters” anymore. It was nice to
earn a little more respect and to be treated as more of an equal than a
peon. From the moment of our return to
the base, the change in the attitude of the Fresno crew was easy to spot. We were recovered from our last WestPac, and
we had survived the shipyards. It was time
to get on with the business of being sailors and get out to sea and start
training for our next deployment. You
could begin to feel the excitement and anticipation begin to build, as WestPac
1990 was less than five months away.
LEAVE AGAIN
A few weeks after we came back from the shipyards, I decided
I should go home again. There were a
couple of reasons for this, first– I had decided to buy an old Willys wagon
from my Dad’s buddy in Laramie. I had
planned to fly into Laramie on a Thursday night, then hang out for a day or so,
then drive the truck back to California and sell it for a tidy profit. My second reason for coming back to Laramie
was to see my old flame, Anna. She and I
had begun writing to each other again, and I had decided that we were serious
again. I was way off base on BOTH of my
reasons for going home.
New glasses - 1989
When I bought my plane ticket for the trip, I bought a
round-trip ticket instead of my intended one-way ride. Lucky for me, because a day before I was to
fly home, Dad told me that the old Willys
wasn’t going to be ready for me to drive back to California. Oh well, easy come, easy go, I thought. I left L.A. that Thursday night, and flew
back to Laramie anyway. After a
late-night reunion with the folks, I hit the sack and woke up Friday ready to
hit the town and see all my old friends.
By this time, however, most of my friends had left town for college, and
there was really no one for me to hang out with. I kind of drug around town for a day and saw
some people I knew, but none of my good friends. I had hoped to go party that Friday night,
but I couldn’t find any, so I stayed home.
I knew that the next day was a Saturday, and the University of Wyoming
was having a home football game, so I could go and see some friends and most
importantly, Anna. It was going to be a
looong Saturday.
I hadn’t been able to get in touch with Anna since I got to
town, and I thought that was a little strange, but nothing prepared me for what
I was to see on Saturday morning. I knew
that she was in the University marching band, and that the UW band always held
rehearsal around 8:00 on Saturday mornings before a home game, so I got up and
headed over to check out rehearsal and see my “girlfriend”. By the time I got there, rehearsal had
already started, so I just sat and watched.
A bunch of my high school friends were in the band, so when they
finished, I was surrounded by people wanting to know what I’d been up to. I looked around for Anna and saw her walking
away with some guy. I thought it was
strange, but the warning signs weren’t quite flashing yet. I went and got something to eat with a couple
of other friends, then I went back to the stadium for the game with the
band. Anna still hadn’t acknowledged my
presence and seemed to be doing anything she could to avoid me. I finally asked my friend, Allen, what was
going on, and he told me that Anna was dating the guy she was sitting
with. I looked up and recognized that
same guy she’d been hanging out with during rehearsal as the one she was
sitting with now. I couldn’t believe it
– she and I had been writing great, intense and serious letters back and forth
for a couple of months, and I was sure that she was just sitting there waiting
for me to come home and see her. I had
been played for a fool – it wasn’t the first time, and definitely not the
last. It was the end of Anna and
my romantic involvement, however. We would
continue to have dealings with one another for the next decade in one form or
another – most times it was on a very negative basis, and only rarely was it my
fault. It was one chapter in the book of
my life that I was glad to write the end to.
I didn’t spend much time pining away for Anna. That night,
my friend, Paul, had invited me to a party with the rest of the band kids. I went and figured that at the very least,
I’d get good and drunk. Paul and I
showed up for the party at around 8, and by 8:30 I was involved in a very
serious and heavy conversation with a girl named Janet. By 9:00 I knew that Janet was my dream woman
- the one for me, and I had forgotten all about Anna. Somewhere around midnight, I decided to
leave, and Janet told me I couldn’t go unless she went with me, so I readily
agreed. We drove to her house, and like
a gentleman, I dropped her off and didn’t try so much as a kiss goodnight. As I drove away and towards my folks’ house,
I was flying high. Then, all of a
sudden, it hit me – I didn’t have her phone number or her address. I had no way of getting in touch with her
again!! I was kicking myself as I went
to bed trying to figure out how I was going to find my dream woman again.
I got up around 7 on Sunday morning, and got ready to go to
the airport for my noon flight back to LA.
I still hadn’t quite figured out how to get ahold of Janet again, and
hoping I could remember where her house was, I jumped in my car and headed out,
hoping to find her house and get her address.
It was no luck, I guess it had been a little darker, and I had been a
little drunker, than I had thought the night before. I drove around for a half hour trying to find
her house, then finally gave up and went home to let my folks drive me to the airport. By the time I had landed in LA, I had devised
my plan – I would simply get ahold of my friend Allen, who had introduced me to
her, and get him to get her address and phone number for me. It was brilliant – but first I had to get
ahold of my friend Paul to get Allen’s phone number for me. Not a problem – I knew that Janet was the one
for me and that I would go to any length to find her again. As soon as I got back to the ship, I sat down
and wrote Paul a letter, asking him to find Allen and ask him for Janet's
number and address – now all I had to do was wait. If I’d have been smart, I’d have just let it
go and chalked it up to experience at this point. But nobody ever said I was smart – especially
when it came to women.
CHER
One day, as we were anchored at the pier, we noticed a
commotion coming from across the harbor.
Over by the USS Missouri, we began to notice something out of the
ordinary. Crews were erecting massive
scaffolding and lighting on her decks, and small boats were running all around
the harbor. We had no idea what was going
on, and just figured it was some new security drill or something. As the sun began to go down, we heard the
unmistakable sounds of loud rock music coming from the Mighty Mo. We weren’t sure what to make of it, and then
the helicopter flew in. You didn’t
usually see helicopters flying over the ships in port, and especially not the
Missouri or the New Jersey. As it got
darker, the lights on the Mighty Mo got brighter, and the music got louder and
we began to hear loud cheering from across the harbor. We were still at a loss as for what exactly
was going on over there, but we knew that we were missing out. Somebody went and grabbed a pair of
binoculars from the signalmen, and we scoped it out.
There were hundreds of guys lining the pier around the
Missouri, and on her decks, it looked like her entire crew was standing there
in their dress uniforms. There was a
huge sound system set up by her guns, and what looked like a band playing for
the crew. Suddenly, the brightest lights
we had seen yet kicked on, and there was Cher in a skimpy little thong outfit,
dancing around on stage. That’s when we
understood what was going on – they were filming a video on board the Mighty
Mo! It was Cher’s “If I Could Turn Back
Time” video – and we got to watch it being made. From that point on, every time they played
that video at the base club, the guys from the Missouri would stand and cheer,
and try to make us a jealous as they could.
Most of us could really have cared less about a Cher video, but it was
still a pretty cool thing to have happen to your ship. If anyone would have come to the Fresno to
film a video, it would have had to have been someone like Hank Williams,
Jr. We weren’t exactly a Cher type of
ship.
Screen grab from Cher's "If I Could Turn Back Time" video - shot aboard the USS Missouri in 1989
STRIKING OUT
As soon as we got out of the yards, and I could get approval
from all of the necessary sources, I began to work on striking out of Deck
Department. Since I hadn’t gone to an
“A” school after boot camp, the only way I could become anything other than a
Boatswain’s Mate was to do what they called “striking out”. Striking Out basically meant that you chose a
rate different than the department you’d been a seaman in and began training to
do that job. After your initial
training, they would transfer you to that department, or let you “strike
out”. After talking with GMG1 at the end of my Mess Cranking time, I decided that I wanted to be a Gunner’s Mate. When we got back from the yards, I got the papers and signatures I needed to begin my training as a
Gunner’s Mate.
When I came aboard the Fresno, there were some very
experienced guys there to train me. Guys
like GMG1 Williansen, GMG2 Bolson, GMG2 Caige, GMG2 Darnhart and a couple of
other guys who had been around awhile and really knew their stuff. My timing was (and wasn’t) pretty good
actually, because by the time I decided to become a Gunner’s Mate, almost all
of those guys had left, or were about to leave, the Fresno. It meant immediate openings in Third
Division, and a quicker route for advancement, but it also meant that there was
really no one left on board the Fresno who knew much about her gun systems. We would have to learn it all by trial and
error. By the time they finally agreed
to let me transfer to Third Division a couple of months later, the division was
in pretty bad shape. I did my best to
learn as much as I could while I was in training, but we never did really get
it together as a division.
Striking out was the best thing I did while I was on the
Fresno. It gave me hope that I’d be able
to do something more stimulating than run a paintbrush for the remaining months
of my Active Duty obligation. It also
meant I'd be able to make third class petty officer sooner and earn a nice
little pay raise. Until I was finally
allowed to transfer to Third Division full time, I split time between First and
Third Divisions – being a deck seaman one day and a Gunner’s Mate the
next. The deck department guys began to
treat me like I wasn’t really one of them anymore, and the Gunner’s Mates
weren’t quite ready to take me on as one of them. Once again – I found myself caught in a
no-man’s land where I didn’t quite belong no matter where I turned. I just did what I always did – kept my head
on straight and worked towards the one thing I wanted – to be finished with
Active Duty and to get enrolled in college and on with my life. I had bigger plans than being a deck ape on
the Fresno for the rest of my life. Not
all of the guys on the ship shared my vision, but I guess some guys are happy with their station and have no desire to achieve anything more
than what they’ve got. This was a big
moment for me, as I realized that I needed a little more than the ordinary, and
set out to make that happen.
BM2 HOWELL
I’d have to say that if there was any one person on the
Fresno that I can honestly say I disliked, it would have to be BM2 Howell. Howell and I never did get along. He was a black guy, and he hung out with the
rest of the brothers and he didn’t seem to like us white kids. He wasn’t exactly the sharpest knife in the
drawer, but he did outrank me – a fact he liked to throw around. A great illustration of his attitude can be
found in the way he dealt with my moving back to First Division Berthing after
I was done with my Mess Cranking duties.
I had come back to First Division Berthing at the end of a
week, and that morning, they decided to swap some of the BM’s between First and
Second divisions. One of the guys they
moved was BM2 Lancer (another guy I had no time for – but that’s another
story). Racks were at a premium, and
their assignment was based on seniority.
The more senior you were, the better rack you got, and if you were senior
to someone, you could take their rack and send them somewhere else. This is what I got caught in the middle
of. It was a Friday morning, and BM2
Lancer decided he wanted the rack that I had just moved into. BM2 Howell decided he would move into another
rack, and he said I could take his when he had moved. Being the dutiful seaman that I was, I went
down to the berthing area and took all of my stuff out of my rack and just kind
of piled it on the floor by the rack I was supposed to move into (Howell’s). Lancer soon moved his stuff into my old rack,
and put his lock on it, leaving everything I owned laying on the floor without
a place to put it. I went down and check
to see if Howell had moved out of his rack and found a bunch of his stuff still
in it. The closer it got to liberty call
for the weekend, the more nervous I got, because I still had no place for my
gear. All of a sudden, liberty call went
down, and I headed for the berthing area to catch Howell and get our racks
switched. When I got down there,
somebody told me that Howell had already left for the weekend. I checked, and his stuff was still in his old
rack, while all of my stuff was lying on the floor! I decided to take things into my own hands
then, and I took out the rest of his gear and placed it on an empty rack where
I shut the curtains and hid everything.
Then I loaded all of my gear into the now empty rack, and moved in.
Monday morning came, and I got up, got dressed and headed up
for breakfast. As I was sitting there
eating, a couple of the other guys from First Division came up and told me
“Man, Howell is looking for you – and he is PISSED!”
I couldn’t imagine why, but I wasn’t too worried about it,
either.
Suddenly, he walked into the mess decks and came right over
to me and started screaming and cussing at me, telling me that he wanted me to
go out onto the foc’sle with him, because he was going to kick my ass. I stood up and asked him what the Hell he was
talking about, and he told me that I had just left his stuff out all
weekend. I told him that he hadn’t left
me much choice, and I had kept an eye on it and made sure nobody took
anything. He wouldn’t listen to anything
I had to say and kept insisting that I had to come outside with him so he could
kick my ass. I finally got tired of
arguing with him, because it became apparent that nothing I said would have any
effect on him, so I changed tactics and went for logic.
“Look” I told him, “You’re a second class petty officer with
a wife and kids. If you hit me, you’re
going to get busted down to third class or maybe even seaman again. You’ll lose money and you’ll lose rank. I’m an E-3 with less than a year left on
active duty. If I get busted for
fighting, I’ll lose $50 bucks a month which doesn’t mean anything to me. I’m not aiming for a career in the Navy like
you are. If you hit me, you’re an idiot,
but if you decide that you’ve just got to do it then go ahead and hit me. But you’d better do it here and now in front
of God and everybody so I’ve got plenty of witnesses. Otherwise, leave the Hell alone and let me
finish my breakfast!!”
With that, I sat back down and grabbed my fork. Howell kind of looked at me and mumbled
something about how he was going to catch me below decks sometime and left. I got a round of applause from the crew on the
mess decks after he left, and I just sat there and tried to catch my
breath. It was the second time I had
really stood up for myself like that, and I was really beginning to like the
feel of it. Howell and I would continue
to have our differences for the rest of my time on the Frez, but he never did
threaten me again. I guess it was just
another part of the experience that put that shy Wyoming kid in the closet for
good.
TRAINING
After we returned from the shipyards, we began training in
earnest. We were out to sea for a couple
of days here and there on a regular basis for the next four or five
months. We did gunnery training,
engineering training, amphibious operations training, underway replenishment
training, General Quarters training and Damage Control training. Everything to get our ship ready for our next
deployment. The majority of our
exercises took place off the coast of San Diego, near Camp Pendleton where the
Marines who sailed with us were stationed.
We very rarely ever pulled into port anywhere other than Long Beach, but
I can remember one fateful weekend we spent in San Diego (more on that to
come). Most of the training exercises
were done and forgotten quickly, and they served more as a “team building”
exercise than as anything that would teach us something new. The older guys on the ship had done all of
the training a million times, and the newer guys would just listen to what the
senior sailors told us to do and learn from that. There were a couple of exceptions to the rule
however, such as my first underway replenishment and then something they called
REFTRA.
Underway replenishment itself is a pretty cool deal and has
been credited with being one of the things that sets the US Navy apart from every
other Navy in the world. What it is
basically, is being able to re-supply your ship from another ship while steaming
across the ocean at high speed. What
happens is, your supply ship, which is a fuel tanker or a grocery supply ship
or in wartime, a hospital ship or an ammunition ship, pulls up beside you and both
ships set their speed the same. Then you
send a line over to them, to which they attach another line, and you pull it
back onto your deck. You send over other
lines (shoot them over via a blank charge and a special adapter on an M-14 rifle)
and then you pull back the actual supply lines.
You secure the lines to your ship and they send over the gear you’ve got
coming – fuel, groceries, mail, personnel (occasionally) and ammunition. It’s a pretty amazing feat to watch, and it
usually comes off without a hitch. I
guess the reason my first one is so vivid in my mind was because of what comes
after you’re all done with the unrep. As
you pull your lines back and you get ready to separate from the supply ship,
every ship plays a “breakaway” song over the ship’s outside speakers. Most ships will play something traditional
like “Anchors Aweigh” or “Stars And Stripes Forever” or the occasional “God
Bless The U.S.A.” but not the Frez. Imagine my surprise (although it shouldn’t
have been) when we broke away from that unrep and all of a sudden the calm of
the open ocean was shattered by the opening screams and distorted heavy metal
guitars of “Welcome To The Jungle” by Guns and Roses! I really expected nothing less from the Frez
– it was her theme song, and the crew knew it.
Now every ship in the Pacific Fleet knew it, too!
REFTRA (pronounced Ref – tray) was the military
contraction for “Refresher Training” and involved almost a week of intense
training in every facet of shipboard operations. We did GQ drills, gunnery drills, GQ drills,
Amphib drills, GQ drills, helo landings, GQ drills, damage control drills and ,
oh yes – GQ drills. They would call us
to General Quarters at all hours of day or night, and it was a sleepless few
days and nights. We had a training team
who came aboard and spent their time running us through drills of every
imaginable sort. At the end of the
training, if we passed, we’d be certified as competent and given the green
light for deployment. It was a stressful
training evolution, and the end of it was two of the worst days I spent aboard
the Frez. At the end of our training, as
a sort of final exam, they put us through what they called “Mass Conflag”. Mass Conflag was a drill where they simulated
the ship being attacked, being hit, being on fire, being dead in the water,
being deaf, blind and without aid for two days.
Every time we’d get one emergency handled, something else would pop up –
sometimes two or three at the same time.
During the course of the training, the training team would come through
to observe and occasionally they’d tap us and let us know we were dead and the
medical crew would have to come evacuate us to the triage area. In addition to all of this training, we still
had our standard underway watches and operation of the ship to tend to. It was a crazy period, but somehow we managed
to get through it and pass – but just barely, we were told. REFTRA proved to us that we were sailors
now, and that the Frez was our ship and our home, and that no one could take
care of her like we could. It proved to
us that we could handle anything, and that we were ready to take the Fresno
anywhere, and into any type of situation.
It was a proud moment aboard the Frez when they announced our passing
grade, and as a reward, they let us pull into San Diego for a weekend of
drunken debauchery. We lived up to that
promise and delivered even more than they bargained for when we found the way
to Tijuana!
TIJUANA
The story of our San Diego weekend is really one that is
told in two parts – the first being Friday and Friday night and the second
being Saturday and Sunday. Part one
begins with the Fresno anchoring off the San Diego coast early Friday
morning. We didn’t pull into the 32nd
street Naval Station like normal, we just anchored off the Broadway Street pier
and ran our small boats back and forth from the ship to the pier for
liberty.
Darkbull and Hall - 1st Division Berthing 1989
The day we pulled in I hooked up with Steve Haulin, Bob
Powell, Phil Darkbull and Scotty Bale.
We jumped in a boat and headed to the pier. Right off of the pier was a bar, and we made
a beeline for it. A few of the Fresno
guys who had come ashore on earlier boats were already holding down the bar, so
we had a quick drink with them, then set off to check out downtown San
Diego. This was mostly the same area we
those of us who had gone to boot camp in San Diego used to wander in, so I knew
where to go. We walked through a few
tattoo shops, and past a few strip clubs and were starting to get kind of bored
when somebody suggested that we hop the trolley and go down to Tijuana. That sounded like a lot of fun, so we walked
over, bought our tickets and took the 30-minute trolley ride to the
border. Somewhere during our ride, Scotty
let it slip that it was his first anniversary.
He couldn’t be home with his wife, so we decided to treat him to a night
out with the boys. We were full of fire
and rarin’ to go when we finally hit the border. We walked across with the rest of the folks
and made our way over to the strip – Revolucion Avenue. We started hitting the bars and drinking with
wild abandon. Tequila shots here,
margaritas there, beers everywhere. We
were trying to get as drunk as possible, and as quickly as possible, because
liberty in Tijuana was secured at midnight.
All US Military had to be back across the border by then, and they
didn’t reopen it until 0600 the next morning.
We figured that if we just got drunk quick then we wouldn’t have to
worry about the curfew, we’d just come back and hit the ship and be ready to go
again the next day. For some reason,
that just didn’t quite work.
PCSN Bale and SN Peterson in Tijuana - 1989
The more we drank, the more time slipped away from us. Soon, it was nearly 9:00, and we realized
that we weren’t going to be ready to go home before midnight. It really didn’t matter much for Scotty
however, as he was almost passed out drunk by then. The tequila shooters had been a bit too much
for him, and he was drooling all over himself.
We knew that we had to get him back across the border, and quickly. Neither Haulin nor Powell were going to
volunteer for that one, so Darkbull and myself decided to help Scotty get
back. We left Steve and Bob sitting in a
bar, and we each put one of Scotty’s arms around our neck and headed for the
border. About 100 yards from the gate, I
decided I wanted to go back and drink some more, so I pawned the job off on
Darkbull, who just kind of looked at me blankly, shrugged his shoulders and
headed for the gate, dragging Bale with him. I turned and walked
back to Revolucion. On the way back to
Steve and Bob, I made my great discovery for the night – those street vendors’
hot dogs which had been a dime apiece that afternoon, were now up to fifty
cents! I shrugged it off, bought me a
buck’s worth and headed for the bar. I
found Steve and Bob exactly where I’d left them and we began drinking in
earnest. Soon, it was about five minutes
to midnight, and we were nowhere near ready to go home. We then decided that we’d just stay and drink
until the gates re-opened at 6! Ahh –
the best laid plans of mice and men. Well,
we made it until about 1, when we realized that we were just too damn drunk to
do anymore. That’s when we came up with
our brilliant plan to sneak back across the border. We knew they had MP’s stationed at the gate
waiting to bust military guys who were out past curfew, so we decided to stash
our Military ID’s in our socks, and only show them our state driver’s
licenses. That way, they’d never know we
were military! Never mind the ship’s
ballcap that Steve was wearing, or Bob’s Fresno T-shirt or our short haircuts –
no, they’d never figure us out!
We stumbled towards the gate, feeling cocky as hell, just knowing we
were gonna make it. I even splurged for
a hot dog – which was up to a dollar by now – damn inflation! By the time we got to the gate, we were
feeling no pain! When they asked
for our ID’s, we pulled out our driver’s licenses and smiled.
“What – no military ID’s?”
“No sir, we’re not military – we’re on vacation!”
The MP just looked at us and shook his head.
“Alright boys, you just saved yourselves a whole load of
trouble by showing me these. Now get
your drunken asses back to your damn ship!”
And he let us go. We
couldn’t believe our good fortune, and not wanting to press our luck, we
quickly walked over to the trolley stop and waited.
We sat there and waited for about twenty minutes when some guy
came up to us and told us that the trolley didn’t run until about 5:00 am – we
had three hours to kill at the border.
So we did what any good drunk does at 2 in the morning – we went to find
a restaurant to eat some breakfast. We
walked probably a mile to a Denny’s-style Mom and Pop restaurant we saw from
the border trolley station. We walked in
and sat down – the only white faces in a sea of brown. The waitress spoke little English, but we
managed do get our drunken English translated into breakfast. After we had eaten, we stumbled back to the
trolley stop and sat on the benches again.
Before you could think it, we had fallen asleep there at the trolley
stop. When I look back on it, I can’t
believe how lucky we were – three sailors, pockets full of money, passed out
drunk on the trolley stop benches at the Tijuana border! Nobody bothered us though, and when the
trolley finally got there, the conductor himself came down and woke us up –
“Come on boys, it’s time to get back to the base”
“But we’re not military” I complained.
“yeah sure – come on, get on the trolley”
He then collected our tickets and let us sleep until we got
to the trolley stop on Broadway closest to the pier. He woke us up once more and sent us on our
way back to the boat, which took us to the ship. You find the nicest people in the strangest
places. By the time we got back to the
ship, it was almost 8:00 in the morning.
The three of us hit our racks and tried to catch up on a little sleep
before part two of the story began.
Part two of the Tijuana Experience began around 3 in the
afternoon. I had just woken up, or more
accurately, come to, from the previous night’s party, and I walked up to the
head to take a shower and try to lose some of the cobwebs. As I was cleaning up, I ran into Mitch
Barris, Mike Derkins and Kevin Toomer.
They were planning to go get a hotel in San Diego for the night, then go
down to Tijuana early Sunday to spend some time. It sounded like a lot of fun, so I invited
myself along. I’m not sure if I was a
terribly welcome addition to the party, but I tagged along nonetheless. I joined the rest of the crew as we grabbed a
liberty boat to the pier. From what I
remember, the crew consisted of Mitch, Mike, Kevin, myself and BM3 Bolden. There were some others along with us too, but
I have forgotten who. We got a room at a
motel somewhere in San Diego and commenced to party down. Several cases of beer soon met their fate
while we drank ourselves into oblivion.
For some reason, I decided that I needed to try chewing tobacco at the
same time. I had never chewed before,
and I quickly realized why, as the flavor and buzz hit me at the same
time. I almost threw up, but quickly
grabbed someone’s spit bottle and got rid of the dip in my lip. I put the bottle back on the table and
decided that I was done with chewing. I
gulped a big hit out of my beer bottle to get the taste out of my mouth, then
set it down and spit the little pieces of chew on my tongue onto the
carpet. I reached back to grab my beer
and picked up one of the indistinguishable brown bottles on the side table
where it had been. I tipped it up to my
lips and took a big swig. About halfway
down I realized my mistake – I had grabbed someone’s spit bottle instead of my
beer! I was drinking warm chew
spit! I quickly headed for the bathroom
and puked my guts out into the sink as the room erupted into uproarious
laughter. I’m sure that if it would have
been anyone but me, I’d have found it funny as hell too – but it was me,
and I didn’t.
At some point in time, there were some girls in the room,
partying with us. I don’t know who they
were or where they came from, but they were girls, regardless. I tried for a little bit to impress them with
my charm and drunken wit, but it just wasn’t working. I tried to think of something to get their
attention, and I remembered the money in my pocket. I had $150 in my pocket – a $100 bill, a
couple of 20’s and a ten. I remember the
denominations, because I pulled out the hundred and wrapped up the other bills
in it and started waving it around. I
was really drunk and dumb by this point, and they let me know it. I remember putting the money against my
temple, in between the bow of my glasses and my cheek. Then I passed out – much to the relief of the
people in the room, I’m sure.
When I woke up the next morning, it took me a minute to
regain my bearings. I soon realized I
was sleeping on the floor of a motel room full of snoring guys and empty beer
bottles. Then I remembered the money. I reached up and felt the spot it had been
the night before, and it was gone! I
started freaking out and tearing the room apart looking for it. It was my last dime and we were headed to
Tijuana – how was I going to drink without money ?! The others got up and helped me look for a
minute, then they decided to go to breakfast.
I had no money to go, so I decided to stay and look. When I was alone in the room, I started to go
through everything. When I unzipped someone’s
shower kit, I found a crumpled, folded $100 bill with two $20’s and a ten
wrapped inside it! It was my money, and
I had found it in someone else’s bag! They
were trying to rip me off! I quickly ran
to the restaurant where they were eating and told BM3 Bolden what I’d
found. I don’t know why I told him –
probably because he was the most senior guy there. He just looked at me and said,
“What the Hell do you want me to do about it? Take care of it yourself”.
So I headed back to the room to wait for them to come
back. Kevin, Mike and Mitch, walked back
in and I confronted them with the evidence.
I was pretty sure I knew who it was, and the guy I accused was not
happy. His reply was to get angry that I
had gone through his stuff looking for it.
When I asked him why he had ripped me off, he got pissed, and we started
to go at it. He was much stronger than
me, and unlike me, he knew how to fight.
I ended up on the floor with his hand around my throat and his fist in
my face. He told me to forget about the
money and to never call him a thief again!
I couldn’t believe it – I had never been ripped off like this before,
and there was nothing I could do about it.
The guy found a way to play it off to the rest of the guys, blaming me
for being drunk and dumb, and he even offered to pay my way to Tijuana and said
he’d buy me a few beers in order to deflect attention away from the fact that I
was pretty sure he had ripped me off.
For some reason, I stayed with them and went down to T.J., and watched him
buy me drinks with my own money. I was
pissed – really pissed, and I never did see eye-to-eye with him again. Yet another lesson about the over-indulgence
of alcohol I should have learned but didn’t.
Beginning to see a pattern here?
I am.
We left Tijuana that afternoon and made it back just in time
to catch the last liberty boat back to the Frez, where we pulled up anchor and
headed back to sea and on towards Long Beach once again. REFTRA was over, and we had passed! We had survived the worst the Navy could
throw at us, and the worst that Tijuana could muster. It was a lesson in survival…on several
fronts.
STEROIDS & E.M.I.
Not long after our trip to Tijuana, I discovered one of the
ulterior motives for our little excursion.
Evidently, TJ was not only a great place to party, but it was also a
place where you could buy steroids over the counter in the drug stores. I had never given much thought to doing
steroids, but after watching the girls flock to Kenny Arrington (who was a
former Mr. Teen Oklahoma bodybuilder and admitted ‘roid user) I had second
thoughts. When the group of guys who
hung out and worked out with Arrington began to use steroids, I asked them to
get me some. I wasn’t about to use the
injectable kind like some of the guys were using, so I had them pick me up some
in pill form. After our return from
Tijuana, a small bag containing two bottles of pills appeared on my rack. I looked at them and decided that I should
start cycling on steroids and pumping iron.
I was a pretty dumb kid, really.
I was about two weeks into my cycle and was beginning to get
impatient with my perceived lack of progress.
I just couldn’t see any changes in my physique. I had begun to get a little angrier about
things, but I just chalked this up to the fact that my daily workout sessions
were keeping me on edge and in pain. One
afternoon, around this time, the C.O. held a “Captain’s Call” in the tank deck,
and after he was done telling us whatever it was that he had to tell us, he
gave us the rest of the day off. A half
day off in port was a rare treat, and I was planning to go over to the gym,
work out, then go to a beach party that night.
As I went down to the berthing area to change into my workout clothes,
one of the BM’s (BM2 Berry, I believe) found me and asked me what I was
doing.
“I’m going to the gym” I replied.
“No you’re not – you’ve got E.M.I.” he said.
“WHAT?”
“Yeah – don’t you remember, you got E.M.I. a couple of days ago
– now you’ve got to do it.”
I couldn’t believe it – I had done something stupid a couple
of weeks earlier (I was late for quarters or something) and they had told me
that I would have to do E.M.I. for it. E.M.I. stood for Extra Military Instruction. It
was like detention in school – if you did something wrong, you had to stay
after liberty call and work for a couple of extra hours. No one had said a word about doing my E.M.I. until this moment. And to make it worse,
it was on our half day off. I was pissed
– extremely pissed. It was about this
time that my friend, Bob Howell, made the mistake of laughing at me. It wasn’t much, just some off-hand comment
about how I had to work while they went out but it set me off.
I had never been a violent guy, but something inside me just
snapped – I went for Bob like a man possessed.
I grabbed him by his lapels and began slamming him against the
lockers. I slammed him again and again,
and screamed at him about how it wasn’t funny.
I didn’t realize it at first, but after seeing the look of terror in his
eyes, I looked down and realized that I had him four inches off the deck, holding
him up by his lapels. His head bounced
off of the steel lockers and it took three guys to pull me off of him. BM2 Berry realized that he probably shouldn’t
have given E.M.I. to a steroid-addled hothead, so he then told me to forget the
E.M.I. – all I had to do was go down to the tank deck and grab four gripes and
take them up to the bow ramp on the main deck, and then I could go.
Powell shows his thoughts about slushing gripes - 1989
I stormed out of the berthing area, and down to the tank
deck, where I grabbed four gripes (which probably weighed thirty pounds each)
and carried them, two in each hand, up three flights of ladders to the main
deck. Once out on the deck, I stomped
over to the foc’sle, where I threw them, a pair at a time, up onto the bow ramp
which stood a good ten feet high. When
they were on the ramp, I stomped down to the berthing area, and got dressed for
the gym. I was totally enraged and full
of testosterone. I didn’t realize it at
the time, but the steroids were wreaking havoc on my system. I never did gain much weight or much muscle
definition, but I did become a raging asshole!
It didn’t dawn on me until about a week later what was
causing my crazy mood swings. The
realization came in the form of an early-morning trip to the head. I got up and had to pee. As I stood at the urinal, doing my business,
I looked down and realized that my pubic hair was coming out in clumps! This was it for me – I knew then that the
steroids were really screwing me up. I
threw what was left of them away, and never touched them again. There are just more important things in life
than big muscles! Finally – a lesson that
I learned! Of course, the fact that I
was still drinking like a fish while I took the steroids probably didn’t help
matters much.
THE DRIVE-IN
One night, we decided to try something new. We had grown tired of the usual places we
hung out, and in our travels around L.A., we found a drive-in theater. Most of us hadn’t seen one in quite awhile,
so we decided that it would be a lot of fun to get a bunch of beer and go watch
a movie (and maybe meet some girls!).
The crew ended up being Jon Hickersham, Mike Derkins, Mitch Barris, Matt
Munderson, Jim Lusher, Jerry Ford and myself.
We talked Kenny Arrington into taking us all in the back of his little
Isuzu pickup. I’m sure we were quite a
sight barreling down I-5 in LA with three guys crammed in the cab, and the
other five of us sitting in the back, trying to hide the four or five cases of beer we
were smuggling into the theater. When we
finally got there, I noticed a sign prominently displayed at the gate that
said, “No Alcohol”. This sign was
summarily ignored as we paid for eight admissions and pulled on in. For some odd reason, I stuck the receipt in
my front pocket instead of throwing it away as I usually did.
We found a place to park near the snack bar, and we all
piled into the back and broke open the beer.
We wasted no time in consuming as many of them as we could, as quickly
as we could. I have no idea what the
movie was, and about an hour into it, none of us were paying attention to it
anyway. We were all pretty much good and
buzzed and the other guys were busy making the rounds of the drive-in looking
for girls who wanted to come join our party.
I stayed in the bed of the truck, drinking beer after beer, and throwing
the empties over the side and onto the ground.
By the time the first half of the double feature was over, the pile of
empty cans was pretty impressive. You
basically had to wade through the empties to get to the fresh ones. I glanced over toward the snack bar, and I
saw our whole group of guys walking back to the truck, being escorted by
someone from the drive-in who looked mysteriously like a manager – and an
unhappy one at that.
“Hey Pete, this guy thinks we snuck in. None of us have the receipt to prove him
wrong, do you have it?”
The manager waded through the sea of empty beer cans to
where I was sitting – I took a pull on my can of beer, reached into my pocket,
and without saying a word, I handed him the receipt. He just looked at it, gave his best “Harumph”
and turned and walked away. He was just
sure he was going to get to kick the whole lot of us out, and when we proved
that we were here legally, we ruined his whole night. He was so disgusted with this fact, that he
totally forgot about his “No Alcohol” sign and he completely ignored the 50 or
so empty beer cans on the ground. Lucky
for us. I don’t know why I saved that
receipt, but to this day, I have a tendency to keep my receipts for anything
and everything I do.
THE SWIM TEST – PART II
A couple of months after I had put in my request to strike
out of Deck Department, they let me go to Third Division full time as a
Gunner’s Mate. I was a lot happier in
Third Division, and was really glad to get away from the constant painting, chipping
and sanding. Life as a Gunner’s Mate was
a lot more relaxed and you were subjected to a lot fewer power trips than you
were in Deck Department. By the time
they let me into Third Division, all of the experienced Gunner’s Mates were
gone, and all that was left was a very motley crew. When I got there, Third Division was led by
Senior Chief Bulletier. Senior Chief was
a Filipino who had been in Data Processing originally, but decided he could
make rate and advance a lot faster as a Gunner’s Mate, so he crossed over and
became a GMG. He didn’t really know
anything about guns or the Fresno’s systems, but he was a Senior Chief, so he
was in charge. Our First Class was GMG1
Williansen. GMG1 had been onboard the
Fresno for a while, and he knew a lot more than Senior Chief did. Unfortunately, GMG1 had been taken away from
us, and was the new Mess Deck Master At Arms, so he spent all of his time
in charge of the Mess Cranks. The other
GMG was GMG2 Raul Muna. Muna was another
Filipino. He had come back into the Navy
after six years of civilian life. In his
first enlistment, Muna, who was a devout Catholic, had been an RP. An RP was a Religious Program man (basically
a priest’s assistant). When he decided
he wanted to get back into the Navy, the only way he could get back in was as a
Gunner’s Mate, so he crossed over and became a GMG solely to get back to active
duty. Consequently, he didn’t know much
more than I did about being a Gunner.
When I first got there, the only other seaman was GMSN Willis. “Will” had been in Deck Department like me and
had struck out to Third Division a couple of months earlier. Will had been the Deck Department yeoman
(secretary) and had a severe aversion to doing any type of manual labor. He was definitely not the sharpest knife in
the drawer and working with Will became an adventure on an almost daily
basis. As you can see, Third Division
was a wreck. Add into this mixture a
19-year old kid from Wyoming, who didn’t know shit from shinola, and you’ve got
one well-functioning group (insert laughter here).
One of my first duties as a Gunner’s Mate was to be assigned
as the C.O.’s personal security guard.
So, whenever the Captain went off of the ship on official business, I
had to go as well. Of course I only went
when the Captain decided he needed security, which was very seldom. Unfortunately for me, in order to be
the C.O.’s security, I had to go with him on the Captain’s gig if need be. The Captain’s gig was a smaller motor boat we
had on the Fresno that we dropped down into the water whenever we needed to get
the CO ashore quickly. We sometimes used
it for a liberty boat as well. At first,
I was kind of excited about this new duty, and then they told me the catch – in
order to be qualified as Security, I had to be qualified on the small
boats. In order to be qualified on the small
boats, I had to be a qualified Second Class swimmer. In order to be qualified as a Second Class
swimmer, I had to go to a week-long swim school. This was what concerned me. If you’ll recall from the beginning of this
story, I can’t swim. Not only that, I’m
afraid of water. Rather odd for someone
who enlisted in the Navy, but it held true nonetheless. Since I didn’t have much of a choice in the
matter, I headed off to the swimming pool on base for my week-long swim school.
When I got to the school it was early on a Monday
morning. There were about twenty of us
in the class. Everyone else looked
fairly calm and collected, and a few even looked excited about the possibility
of getting in a morning swim. Not
me. I sat on one of the chairs by the
pool and worried until the instructor showed up. The instructor let it be known immediately
that he didn’t want to be there. He was
a S.E.A.L. instructor who was stationed at the S.E.A.L. BUDS School in San
Diego. He let us know that he had been
sent up here for a reason he wasn’t exactly sure, but he had been given leave
for the week after our school, so as soon as all of us passed “this stupid damn
test”, he could have the rest of this week off as well. He let us know all of this in a manner that
was decidedly less than cordial.
My nerves were strung even higher by the time he began to
have groups of five jump into the pool and take their test. He told us that he was just going to start
off with the test, and who ever passed this morning would be excused. The swim test consisted of jumping in, doing
the crawl stroke to the other end, turning and doing the side stroke back, then
doing another length of the backstroke, and back doing the breast stroke. You then had to float for five minutes and swim one last length doing
whatever stroke you wanted. That was
five lengths of the pool and five minutes of floating! I was terrified! I diligently jumped in the pool when I was
ordered to and made it about one length of the pool before I got back out, exhausted
and shaking. The instructor just looked
at me and shook his head. By lunch time
that first day, there were only six of us left who hadn’t passed – myself and
five black guys. The black guys had an
excuse – many African-descended people have what is called “negative
buoyancy”. What that is, basically, is a
physiological inability to float because your body mass is too dense to float
naturally. So there I stood, the lone
fat white kid, surrounded by five black guys who were too dense to float.
We spent the rest of that day, and the next morning, working
on our different strokes and on different methods to help our flotation. By lunchtime on Tuesday, the black guys had
all passed, and I was the only person left in the class. The instructor was not happy with me and
showed his impatience and disgust on an almost constant basis. Tuesday passed without me learning anything,
as did Wednesday. Finally, at lunchtime
on Thursday, the instructor looked at me and said,
“Look, you’ve already ruined this whole week I could have
been on leave. Are you EVER going
to learn how to swim?”
I looked him right in the eye and said, “I seriously doubt
it”.
He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly and said, “That’s what
I thought…here” and he reached over and signed my papers saying I had passed
and was a qualified Second-Class swimmer.
“Now – go back to your ship and get the Hell out of my sight. And for God’s sake, if you fall overboard,
you forget my name as the man who taught you to swim!”
I couldn’t believe my luck as I gathered my papers and my
clothes and headed back to the Fresno. I
was now a qualified swimmer, but still couldn’t swim a lick. I guess if you can’t beat ‘em and don’t want
to join ‘em, you can always just wear ‘em down with constant and repeated
ineptitude.
THE LABOR DAY TRIP
Not too long after my swim school debacle, I pulled another
boneheaded stunt. This one could have
landed me in the brig for awhile, and should have landed me in civilian jail or
the hospital.
It happened one Labor Day Weekend. We were scheduled to head out for another
training mission first thing Tuesday morning, and we had spent the past week
getting things in order for it. I had
duty weekend and had been working with the rest of Third Division to make things
shipshape for the upcoming mission.
About mid-morning on Monday, I got called to the quarterdeck. They told me that the Engineering Department
was in desperate need of a part, and the only way to get it was to drive to San
Diego to pick it up. Since I was duty
driver, they elected me to drive down to the 32nd Street Naval
Station to get the part.
The ship’s duty vehicle was a big 15-passenger van, and the
thought of driving from Long Beach to San Diego on Labor Day weekend was not
exactly appealing. But orders are
orders, so I jumped in the van with the requisition papers in hand and headed
out for the gate. About a block before I
got to the gate, I saw Jim Lusher walking down the sidewalk. I stopped and asked him if he wanted to go
with me. He agreed and jumped in the van
and we were off. I had just thought that
it might be a good idea to have some company to help me navigate, as I wasn’t
too experienced at driving through California traffic yet.
We made it down to San Diego without too much trouble – the
traffic was fairly heavy, but not as bad as I’d thought it might be. Somewhere during our trip, we had come up with
the perfect plan. We had decided that I
would drop Jim off at the base club while I ran over to the supply department
and got the part we needed. It made
sense to us, so that’s exactly what I did.
I dropped Jim off, then headed over to get the part. This is where the plan fell apart. I spent about an hour with the Supply P.O.
trying to find the small piece of gearing we needed, but it was nowhere to be
found. He checked his system and found
that they did indeed have one in stock, but it was at the Broadway Street
Supply Pier, downtown. I thanked him,
jumped in the van and went to pick up Jim.
When I got to the club, he was sitting there with a good pile of empties
surrounding him. He told me that he had
been slamming them down, thinking I’d only be gone about fifteen minutes or
so. I had been gone nearly two hours,
and Jim hadn’t slowed down once. I
couldn’t pass up a good opportunity, so I had one with him, then we hopped back
in the van to go get the part. About
halfway to our destination, we came up with yet another great plan – I was going
to drop Jim off at the base club at RTC/NTC, and let him drink with the booters
while I got the part. The base was about
five miles out of my way, but I figured “what the Hell” and dropped him
off. I then drove to my destination and
spent another hour waiting for them to find the part I needed. By the time I had it in my hand, and had made
it back to the RTC/NTC base club to get Jim, it was a little after 5:00 pm.
Jim hadn’t slowed down his pace at all since the club on 32nd
street, and he was obviously feeling no pain.
I couldn’t pass up this opportunity to enjoy a couple myself, and I went
ahead and ordered up a couple. This was
the first time I had been on base since boot camp, and I was enjoying the
nostalgia of it all. Also, the fact that
I was wearing a uniform with my three Seaman stripes on the sleeve, and all of
the booters were saluting me and calling me “sir” was a kick. We spent some time telling the booters
stories about what it was like out in the fleet and let them buy us some drinks. Pretty soon, it was closing in on 6:00, and I
knew we had to go. I drug Jim, and Jim
drug me, out of the club and back into the van.
As a compromise, we stopped and bought a 12-pack for the drive home. With a good buzz working, and a 12-pack beside
us, we made our way back onto the interstate for the drive back to LA. Unfortunately, I had somehow forgotten that
it was Labor Day Weekend. More
specifically, it was 6:30pm on a Labor Day Weekend Monday night.
Traffic was bumper-to-bumper from San Diego all the way up
to LA, which was bad for time, but good because it gave us plenty of time to
drink our beer. We had to make more than
one stop along the road for a rest break, but since we were going nowhere fast,
it didn’t seem to matter. My buzz was working
well, and the extra beer soon had me feeling no pain. Jim and I talked and laughed and drank beers
for another three hours or so, and we got back to Long Beach somewhere around
10:00 that night. By the time we got
back, I was pretty well drunk, and I had actually bummed a couple of cigarettes
from Jim in an attempt to cover up the smell of booze so I wouldn’t get in
trouble when I got back to the Fresno. I
had left around 10:00 that morning for what was supposed to be a five-hour trip
– max! I had been gone for 12
hours, and was drunker than a skunk when I finally came in with the part that
Engineering had been waiting for all day.
As I walked on the quarterdeck the Officer Of The Deck yelled something
at me that I didn’t fully comprehend. I
just handed him the part, then mumbled some sort of an answer and walked down
to my berthing area and went to sleep. I
never really heard much more about it, but I did notice that I was never put on
as the duty driver again.
When I finally sat down and thought about what I had done,
and what all I could have been busted for, I scared myself. Let’s see…I was:
1) Drunk
on duty
2) Absent
from my appointed place of duty at my appointed time.
3) Driving
under the influence
4) Had
an unauthorized passenger,
Not to mention the fact that I was a:
5) Minor
in possession
6) Had
an open container in a moving vehicle.
There were probably some other charges they could have
thrown in there, like:
7) Misuse
of Government property
8) Destruction
or defacement of Government property.
All in all, I think I was incredibly lucky that I wasn’t
killed, or I didn’t kill anybody on that trip.
You’d think that something like that would teach me a lesson. You’d sure think that – but you’d be
wrong. Again.
THE LITTLE MERMAID
Another one of our favorite activities during off time was
to go to the movies. There was a movie
theater on base that showed second run movies, but I only went there a couple
of times. We went to Mann’s Chinese Theater
in Hollywood ONCE…at nearly $10 a ticket, we couldn’t afford to go again! Usually, we’d go see a movie at one of three
theaters – one down by Seal Beach, one by Belmont Shores, and the one at the
Lakewood Mall. I probably went to the
one by the Lakewood Mall the most.
In order to get to the Lakewood Mall, you had to ride the
bus from the base to downtown Long Beach.
There, you’d get off and transfer to another bus which would take you to
Lakewood. When we knew we were going to
a movie – the usual drill was to take the bus to Long Beach, then make a little
side trip to Jack’s Liquors, and pick up a bottle or two to smuggle into the
theater with us. From there, it was onto
the next bus and the theater, where we’d see a flick and get about half drunk. Then it was back to Long Beach and another stop
at Jack’s to finish the job. I don’t
remember many of the movies I saw there, but the one that does stick in my mind
was The Little Mermaid.
The reason I remember this one so well is because it was one
of the few that I went to by myself. For
some reason, I found myself with a day off and no one to hang out with, so I
decided to go see a movie. I jumped on
the bus to Long Beach, then headed over to Jack’s and bought my usual pint of
Jim Beam. Once it was safely stashed in
my boot, I caught the next bus and headed for the mall. By the time I got to the theater, it had
started to rain, and I was glad to be headed inside for awhile. I walked into the lobby of the theater, and
up to the ticket counter. I had no idea
what I wanted to see, and nothing really tripped my trigger. Then I saw the poster for The Little
Mermaid! I had heard a lot about the
movie, and it was one of those that you just couldn’t tell the guys on the
ship, “Hey – let’s go see The Little Mermaid!”, without getting your ass kicked,
or at the very least, having your masculinity seriously questioned! I quickly scanned the lobby, and not seeing
anyone I knew, I bought a ticket and walked into the theater to watch a movie
about a cartoon mermaid.
I realized I was severely out of my element almost as soon
as I sat down – I was the only person in the theater who’s head went ABOVE the
back of their seat! It was me and twenty
12-year olds! Oh well, I thought, it’ll be a good movie anyway. And it was!
I was really enjoying the film, when I remembered the bottle in my
boot! I was starting to get a little
thirsty, so I got up and headed to the snack counter to buy myself a soda for a
mixer. I went back in and sat down and
quickly drank half of the soda, then replaced it with Jim Beam. That cup quickly disappeared, and since my
soda was gone, I just tipped up the rest of the bottle straight and drank it
down as well. I was trying hard to be
inconspicuous, and would have gotten away with it…until I developed a case of
butter fingers. Right there, in the
middle of an absolutely silent and enraptured theater full of preteen Disney
fans, I dropped my empty bottle. CLANK,
CLANK, CLANKITY CLANK CLANK!!!!! The sound of the glass bottle bouncing around
on the concrete floor was deafening! I
felt twenty little pairs of eyes turn my direction, and as much as I tried to sink
down into my chair to disappear, it was to no avail – my size gave me
away! Embarrassed as all get out, I
jumped up and hastily walked out of the theater, and into the one next
door. The movie in this theater was just
starting, and the audience was all adults, so I found and empty chair and sat
down. I sat through “Blaze” starring
Paul Newman – it’s a movie about a Governor who hooks up with a stripper –
probably more along my lines anyway! The
good thing about it was, that when I got back to the ship and told the guys
that I saw a movie about strippers, I wouldn’t be lying! It was better than telling them what I really
did. I’m probably the only guy in the
history of…history…who snuck a bottle of booze into The Little Mermaid to get
drunk with the 12 year olds! Oh, the
levels of depravity to which we can sink will boggle the mind at times!
JON GRACE
Sometime that fall we got a new member of Third Division, as
GMSN Jon Grace reported to the Fresno.
Jon had been in the S.E.A.L. teams, but had been relieved of his duties
and sent to us. He told us that he had
been kicked out for punching an officer, but we later found out he had been
kicked out for being unsat in his inspections, and basically just being a
dirtbag. It was immediate to all of us that
Jon had an ego the size of Texas. He was
cool – just ask him. The problem was
that he was a fairly good-looking guy, and there was no shortage of women to
help him confirm his beliefs that he was God’s gift to the female sex. Jon was married, but was a definite
subscriber to the “I ain’t married…My wife’s married, but I ain’t married”
school of thought. He did know a little
more about gun systems than I did, and if I’m not mistaken, he had been through
GMG “A” school before his BUDS training and the S.E.A.L. teams. He tried to fit in with the rest of Third
Division, and in the end he quit trying and decided that the rest of Third
Division should fit in with him.
He was just too cool for us.
Jon didn’t go out with us very often, being married and all,
but I do recall the night he went out with us to the bars in Belmont
Shore. I remember it so well, because it
was the first time I had been to a bar in California and actually had a
good-looking girl talk to me. We had
been partying for a while, and around midnight or so, I had struck up a
conversation with a very attractive young lady at the Acapulco Inn. She and I talked for awhile, and shared a few
drinks while we got to know each other.
She told me that her Dad had been in the Navy. He had been a Chief of some sort and she had
always liked sailors. I knew this was my
chance and I jumped on it. I leaned in
and kissed her. She actually kissed me
back and I knew I was in like Flynn! We
sat and drank and kissed a bit more, and just about the time we had decided to
leave the bar and go to her house, Jon came over to where we were sitting. He walked up and told her
“Hi. I’m Jon. This guy is a total geek – why not come with
a real man.”
And that was it for me.
She was in love immediately, and forgot all about me, as she followed
Jon out the door.
The next morning, at quarters, Jon was laughing at me and
telling me how he could steal any girl from me at any time. I just smiled and told him,
“Don’t worry John – I don’t get mad…I get even.”
He laughed at me and told me there was no way I would ever
pull one over on him. But I did. I got back at him in spades. It may have taken nine more months, but I did...
CAGLE AND THE BASE CLUB
I wasn’t terribly selective about who I hung out with when I
drank, just as long as it was someone who would drink as much as me for as long
as me. I seem to recall a night at the
Base Club when I happened to run into one of our Boatswain’s Mates, BM3 Paul
Cagle. Paul and I were friendly, and we
decided to pool our resources and get down to some serious drinking. Cagle was a good friend of Hick, Arrington,
Sorby and that crew, and I had hung out with him a few times at places like
the Silver Bullet and the Bandstand. If
I recall correctly, he had even joined us a couple of times at PBS and on
Fourth Street. On this particular night,
it was just he and I at the Base Club, and we decided to see who could get the
drunkest.
We started buying pitchers of beer, and racing through them
just as fast as we could go. We had been
through four or five apiece, when Paul came back from the bar with two double
shots of Jack Daniel’s. I still had a
hard time with JD after my little experience at the Poison concert, but I was
always up for a challenge. I took the
glass, tipped it back, and gulped the nasty brown liquid down. I slammed my empty glass to the table and
looked at Cagle. I felt the engines
reverse almost immediately as the whiskey met the beer. I didn’t say a word, I just opened my mouth,
and out shot a two-foot stream of pure beer foam. All over the table. Paul just looked at me and I looked at
him. Not a word was exchanged as we
picked up our pitcher of beer, grabbed our glasses and moved to a new table
where we began drinking all over again.
I’m sure it was quite a show for the rest of the patrons, but we didn’t think
twice. It was drink, puke, then drink
some more. Ahhhh, the life of a sailor!!
My other memory of Paul Cagle involved his girlfriend. She was a model, and hung out with a bunch of
rich spoiled girls who were all just as hot as she was. It was always cool to hang out with Cagle and
his girlfriend, mostly because she got to drive her Daddy’s Porsche 911, and
she’d let Paul drive it occasionally.
Whenever Paul got to drive, he’d take us for rides. This usually only happened when she was drunk
enough to lose her sense of better judgment, which meant that we were all
pretty well hammered too. We’d jump in
the Porsche and go screaming down the 405 at about 100mph, laughing like hyenas
and drinking beer. We laughed in the
face of danger! Truth be known, we were
just too dumb to know any different.
One night, Cagle’s girl had rented them a room at a fairly
upscale hotel down by the Long Beach Convention Center. I think that she had planned a little
romantic interlude with her boyfriend.
Unfortunately for her, he had accidentally (on purpose) told his Navy
buddies what room they were in! We
arrived right on time, and loaded for bear.
There were five or six of us, and each of us had a fresh 12-pack under
our arm. It was party time!! What we didn’t realize was that this wasn’t
exactly the City Center Motel in downtown Long Beach. None of us had ever been in a high-class hotel
like this before, and we had no sooner stepped into the lobby with our cases of
beer, than the hotel Concierge walked up to us and told us to leave. We were shocked – who the Hell did this guy
think he was, telling us we couldn’t drink in his hotel? We argued with him, and then he threw us a
loop – he told us we could come in, but we’d have to pay a “corkage fee” for
the beer. Basically, he told us that the
hotel would charge us $20 for each 12 pack, just to bring it into his
building. We told him he was out of his
mind and argued a little more. He then
threatened to call the police, and things began to get ugly. Unfortunately for Cagle, he was right in the
middle of it. His girlfriend was yelling
at him to leave his drunken friends and come up to the room, and his drunken
friends were yelling at him to leave his girlfriend and come drink with the
guys. It was not a pretty scene, and it
ended up causing the first of many breakups of Cagle and his girlfriend. I have no idea what ever happened to the two
of them, but if things continued down the path they were headed, I’d say that
they were probably married and divorced quickly…twice.
NADSAP
With all the drinking going on amongst the underage sailors,
you can only imagine the trouble that was bound to happen. The Navy did not exactly turn a blind eye
towards it’s 18,19 and 20 year old drunken sailors. The Navy had a program called NADSAP (Navy
Alcohol and Drug Safety Action Program) that it used to help steer wayward
sailors back on course. I was never sent
to NADSAP, but I know I came close.
There were several of the other deck sailors that went, but for some
reason, I lucked out. The night that Bob
Powell and Steve Haulin got their NADSAP ticket punched, they had me dead to
rights, but for some reason I missed out on the fun.
It was a typical Fresno evening in Long Beach. Everyone had gone off to do their own thing,
and our usual group of guys was wandering around the base to try to find a way
to get a drink (or ten). Somehow, we
ended up talking one of the Fresno’s “of-age” sailors into buying us some hard
liquor at the base package store. It
didn’t happen very often, but occasionally you could talk someone into it. The usual deal was to pay them $10 over the
cost of the bottle (since providing for underage drinkers was a very serious
offense to the Navy). Whatever the
reason, and whoever the culprit, we found ourselves the proud owners of a
couple of bottles of Jim Beam, and a bottle of Jack Daniels. Each of us had bought our own bottle, and
then had bought a 2-liter bottle of Coke as a mixer. The standard gig was to dump out half of the
Coke, then pour in the fifth and mix it 50/50.
A strong two liters of hooch, to say the least. Since there weren’t a whole lot of quiet,
secluded places on base to just sit and drink, we ended up outside of the main
gate by the seawall. It was the only
time I can ever remember being there, but there we were. About 20 yards from the Main Gate, sitting on
the rocks by the water, just below eye level for the gate sentries – we opened
up the bottles and had at it. We were
having a good time, and the hooch was going down quickly. As sailors will, we soon began to get a
little lonely. Someone suggested that we
move our party over to the base club to see if there were any WestPac Widows in
town looking for fun. That sounded a lot
better than sitting on rocks covered in seagull shit and getting hammered by
ourselves, so we grabbed our Coke bottles and headed for the Main Gate.
The Gate Sentry checked us on base, and we began our walk
towards the base club. We were not
walking in a terribly straight line, either.
As we neared the club, we began to arouse the suspicion of the MP’s who
had now driven past us a couple of times, checking us out. They knew something was up with us, and they
were determined to find out what it was.
Sensing trouble on the way, I quickly finished my hooch, and tossed my
bottle in a trashcan. Steve and Bob were
still carrying their bottles when we walked up to the front door of the
club. We tried to walk in, but they told
us we couldn’t come in with outside drinks.
Steve and Bob didn’t want to throw them away, so we just walked across
the street to the park to finish before we went in. Suddenly, we heard voices behind us say,
“You guys come over here…NOW!”.
Steve and Bob turned around just as the MP’s reached
us. I kept walking. I pretended I didn’t hear them, kept my head
down and continued to walk towards the ship.
I could hear them giving Steve and Bob a hard time, and I heard the
cruiser doors open and close as they put them inside. I kept walking. Head down, moving as quickly and as soberly
as I could manage to appear, I kept walking. All the way back to the ship. To this day, I have no idea why they let me go,
but they did and I’m grateful for it.
When Bob and Steve got back to the ship, they were pissed at me for not
getting busted with them, but I just shrugged it off.
The next morning, the two of them went up in front of the
chief and found out that, since this was not their first alcohol-related
offense, they were being sent to NADSAP.
NADSAP was a three-day training program, where you went in after work
and sat in a classroom where they lectured you about the evils of alcohol for a
couple of hours. Not terribly effective,
but the Navy thought it was a good idea.
I heard tell of Fresno sailors who went to NADSAP and took drinks into
class WITH them. They would do the old
50/50 mix in a McDonald’s cup or a sports bottle and have a drink while they attended
alcohol counseling. That’s the Navy for
you. NADSAP was the second step in the
Navy’s Alcohol Abuse Program (CAAC was the first – a visit with a
counselor). The third step was an
in-patient rehab program, and I can only recall one Fresno sailor getting sent
to that. Truth be known, we were
probably ALL candidates for that at one point or another. NADSAP became a standing joke, and getting
sent to it became a “badge of honor” amongst Fresno’s severely twisted
mentalities. A badge of honor I’m glad
to say that I never earned.
Tex at Mother's Bar in Sunset Beach, CA - 1989
Why yes, I think I WILL have another!
Don't they I.D. ANYONE in here?
It's okay, we're all brothers at Mother's - Sunset Beach, CA 1989
BENTON’S WEDDING AND THE MOVE
EN3 Dave Benton and I had become fairly good friends. After all, I had been with him the night he
had met his fiancée at the Silver Bullet.
When they decided to get married before we left on deployment, Dave
invited a bunch of us to the wedding.
The wedding was to be held at a little church over by her parent’s
house, and the reception at her parent’s house.
I was excited – this was the first friend’s wedding I had ever been
to. Of course, I was only 19, so that
stood to reason. I went out and bought a
dress shirt and a new sport jacket and everything. I was lookin’ good and ready to go.
The morning of the wedding, I met up with one of the firemen
from Engineering, and we agreed to go to the church together. For some reason, we decided to get a cab to
take us there. Some $50 later, we
finally got there! The bus would have
been cheaper, but it would have taken us four hours. The wedding was fun, it was kind of cool to
see, but the reception was an absolute blast!
There were kegs of beer and copious quantities of hard liquor ready to
go. We wasted no time in helping
ourselves. It didn’t take long for us to
get good and stupid. I don’t really
remember exactly what we ended up doing, but I seem to recall us showing up at
the Silver Bullet again. I believe that
was the night that they wouldn’t take my fake ID, and I ended up sitting in the
bed of Arrington’s truck for four hours waiting for everyone to come out. I didn’t mind too much - they left me with a
case of beer and a bottle of Crown Royal so at least I had some friends.
About a month later, Dave and his new wife, who had been
living at her parent’s house, decided to move.
Dave asked me to give him a hand moving into their new apartment, and I
was all too willing to help. We spent a
Saturday moving furniture and boxes from house to house, interspersed with the
drinking of insane amounts of beer. Dave
had rented a big Ryder truck to help, and by early afternoon, the floorboards of
the truck were covered in empty beer cans.
We were almost done moving, and were going to make one last trip when it
happened. Dave and I were trying to pull
out into traffic from the parking lot of their new apartment complex. We looked left and looked right, and Dave hit
the gas and pulled out. Unfortunately, Dave’s
peripheral vision had been somewhat impaired by the tenth or twelfth can of
Budweiser, and we ran smack into a Jeep pickup that was driving by. We hit it right at the rear wheels, and sent
it spinning across the street. We
immediately pulled the Ryder truck into the parking lot across the street and
went out to assess the damage.
The poor kid we had hit was heartbroken. The truck was his pride and joy, and it was
in the process of being restored. It was
perfectly straight and primered, with shiny new American Racing wheels and
fresh BF Goodrich T/A all-terrain tires.
He told us that his folks had just given him a gallon of Ferrari red
paint for his birthday, and he was taking the truck over to the body shop for
painting when we hit him. It was
supposed to be a show truck, and Dave and I had just rearranged his plans. When we hit him, we had bent one of his new
wheels badly, and we severely creased the right side of his box. It was going to take a lot more body work to
get it ready to paint again. To top it
off, the kid didn’t have any insurance, and the truck wasn’t licensed, because
it was in the process of restoration, and it wasn’t being driven. Just dumb luck, I guess. The damage to the kid’s truck was the least
of our worries, however. Our big concern
was the fact that our rental truck was full of empty beer cans, and we were
full of the contents of those cans. As
we saw the police car coming up the road, Dave looked over at me and said
“Oh shit, man – the cans!”
I quickly walked over to the truck and scooped all of the
empties out of the cab and kicked them under the truck, hoping like Hell that
the cops wouldn’t look under there.
The policeman questioned all three of us, wrote out his
reports and gave the kid a citation for no license or insurance. I don’t remember if he gave Dave a ticket or
not, but I do recall that the whole time he was standing by our truck I was
trying to block his view of the empties lying under the thing. The cop never looked, and never said a word
about the fact that we were obviously drunk, and he got in his car and drove
off as the wrecker came and pulled the kid's truck away. Dave and I just sort of looked at each other,
shrugged and got back in the Ryder truck.
We drove over to his wife’s parent’s house, parked the truck and had a
couple of beers. And that was that. Dave said he turned the truck back in and
never heard a word about the damage to it, or about the accident. Lucky – just plain damn lucky…on several
counts that day!
TEST TIME
I had been spending a lot of my free time, believe it or
not, studying for my the Navy-Wide Petty Officer’s Tests. This was the test for me to make third class
petty officer and become a Gunner's Mate for the rest of my enlistment. This was the final, official step in striking
out of Deck Department.
They gave the test on a fall afternoon on the mess decks,
and all of the hopefuls filed in and took our seats to try our luck at becoming
Petty Officers. I had gone through the
Gunner’s Mate Guns training manual, the GMG 3&2, and had really tried to
pick up everything I could, in order to be ready. Lucky for me, the GMG rate was “wide open”,
meaning that the Navy had a shortage of Gunner’s Mates, and the curve on the
test would be very advantageous to those of us taking it. That’s how the Navy filled the spots they
needed – they would just drop the minimum required scores on the Third Class
tests until enough guys had been passed to fill all of the needed holes. Not exactly the most stringent of methods,
but hey – beggars can’t be choosers, and I was just looking forward to the
extra money I’d get when I put on my third class emblem (or “crow”).
Jon Grace and SN Willis were taking the GMG3 test as well,
so we walked in together, took our seats, and were issued our respective tests
and answer booklets. They gave us the
“go” signal, and we dug in. The test was
a lot harder than I thought it would be – up to this point, the majority
of the Navy testing that I’d been subjected to had been a joke, I guess I
expected this trend to continue. The
GMG3 test was actually fairly difficult.
They asked questions about gun systems that I had no idea about. Had I gone to GMG “A” school, I’d have been a
lot more prepared for what I found, but being a striker from Deck Department, I
was pretty much just clueless. I just picked
what I thought looked the most sensible and hoped for the best. I had been told that the old Navy stand-by
when taking tests was to remember the phrase “When in doubt, Charlie out”. What that meant was that when you had no idea
what the answer was, you just guessed the answer “C”. More often than not, “C” was the right
answer. Armed with that one piece of
advice, I’ll have to admit that I “Charlie’d Out” waaaay too many of those
questions.
I finished the test first, followed closely by Grace, and
finally, Will. We all turned in our
answer booklets and left the mess decks.
We now had to wait for a couple of months to get the results and find
out if we would make GMG3 or not. If we
had made it, we would become Petty Officers right about the time we left on
WestPac, and our frocking ceremony (when we received our new rates) would take
place somewhere in the middle of the Pacific.
The three of us tried to seem confident of our performance, but I know I
was nervous as hell that I had flunked the thing. I was going to be really embarrassed if Will
passed and I didn’t. Nothing to do but
wait now – story of the military, hurry up and wait. It was a weight that hung over our heads
like a ton of bricks until we finally got the results back a few weeks later.
YET ANOTHER TATTOO
As winter set in to Southern California, our party life
seemed to slow down a bit. Gone were the
beach parties, and the wild, drunken drives across LA in the back of a pickup
truck. Also gone were the nights spent
sitting out at The Island and nights drinking with the bums in the street
outside of Jack’s. The base club had
also begun to crack down a bit on underage drinkers, and they had changed their
stamp system to foil those of us who had just stamped ourselves. We could still drink on Fourth Street, but
the novelty of that had worn off, and it was only rarely that we made the trek
to go slumming. It was against the
backdrop of this boredom that I decided to get one more tattoo. I had sworn I would never get one, and after I got the first
one, I said,
“well, maybe one, but never two.”
After my second one, it was “That wasn’t so bad – maybe I’ll
get another…someday”.
In early December, someday had come. I had nothing better to do, so one evening
after payday, I caught the bus downtown and walked into Bert Grimm’s tattoo
parlor. They had done my other two tats,
so I knew they did good work. This time,
I decided I needed a patriotic tattoo, and there was an eagle on the wall that
I really wanted. The only problem was
that it was a huge back piece, and I wanted it on my chest. After a lot of discussion, the artist on duty
drew up a nice eagle and American flag tattoo.
I liked it, and had him add a ribbon with the word “Freedom” on it
hanging from the eagle’s talons. And
with that, the decision was made. I sat down
in the chair and he fired up the needle.
Some two hours later, he was finished, and I had a newly decorated, and
very sore, left pec. I was happy with
the work, so I paid my $170.00 and headed home.
I woke up the next morning, and looked again. I still liked it, so I guess it passed the
test. And now, nearly fifteen years
later, I still like it. I always thought
that that eagle and flag were a good choice, and they helped me to remember the
bigger reason I was in the Navy. It was
about Freedom and Country, and I was doing my part to make America the Land of The
Free. My mother even liked it – until I
had the letters “USN” added to it a few years later. I guess I was now officially a real sailor –
I cussed like a truck driver, drank like a fish and had three tattoos. It don’t get any more sailor than that.
THE SKI TRIP
At one point that winter, we decided to go skiing. I don’t remember everyone who went, but it
was probably the usual crew of myself, Bob Powell, Jim Lusher, Steve Haulin and
a couple of other guys. On a Saturday
morning, we left the Fresno early, and made the three hour drive up to Big Bear
Mountain for a day of skiing and fun in the snow. The guys I was with didn’t have a lot of
experience skiing, but I had skied a lot before I joined the Navy, and I was
just excited to be getting back on the snow.
My biggest memories of this day came, first at the rental shop, where
they refused to tighten my bindings above a 5.
I kept telling the guy that I was an expert (according to their rating
system), and that if he kept them that low, I’d pop right out of them. He still wouldn’t turn them up, and I ended
up signing some sort of release waiver, releasing them of all responsibility
for my injuries, and taking the screwdriver and cranking them down myself! Crazy California laws, anyhow!
One of the best parts of that day was that I finally pulled
off the first – and only – helicopter jump that I’ve ever tried. It was towards the end of the day, and I had
been skiing the moguls at the top of the mountain all day. There weren’t many
people up there, I guess that they scared off most of the fairly lower-level
skiers on the hill. It had been a great
day of skiing, and I was headed down to the lodge to find the other guys who
were all drinking at the bar. I was
skiing directly under the lift line, and had my parallel working and was
looking good. I had never been much of a
hot dogger, and truth be know, in Colorado or Wyoming, I was a pretty much
average skier. For some reason I was feeling
crazy, so I decided to try to do a 360 under the lift line. I found a nice little jump, built up some
speed and hit it perfectly. I twisted
myself and, almost couldn’t believe it when I spun completely around and landed
with my skis pointed downhill! I had
done it – my first helicopter!!! I was
ecstatic! I skied down to the lodge,
ready to accept the adulation I was sure would be coming my way. I found the guys at the bar and asked them if
they had just seen my amazing move – they were all watching TV and didn’t seem
to care much. I was crushed – my finest
moment on snow, and no one had seen me!
Figures.
On the way out of the ski area, I saw what became another
big memory – I saw Corey Feldman – an actor who had been big a couple of years
earlier (Goonies, et al.), get into his Porsche with some hot blonde. I remember it vividly because
earlier I had seen him falling all over the place on the slopes in his $800
Gore-Tex ski suit with his matching $1000 Volkl skis, and had laughed at
him. I had wondered who the idiot with
too much money was, and now I knew – it was Corey Feldman! I guess the closest ski slope to Hollywood
attracts them all – rich actors who can’t ski, and broke sailors who laugh at
them. It was a lot of fun – probably the
most enjoyable day that I spent off of the ship during our time in Long
Beach. The funny thing was, I didn’t
drink at all, either. The fact that I
had fun without being wasted was completely lost on me, as I headed directly
for the base club after we got back and got puking drunk once again.
THE CHRISTMAS PARTY
Around the first of December, the ship hosted a ship’s
company Christmas party at a hotel in Long Beach. We were scheduled to leave for WestPac on
January 12th and we were about to go into another stand down period
so guys could go home on leave before our six months at sea. I’m not sure who’s bright idea it was to
throw this party, but I do know that there is at least one hotel in Long Beach,
California that we are probably no longer welcome in.
When they told us about the party, they told us it was a
dress-up occasion, uniforms optional.
None of us felt like wearing our uniforms so I broke out the old sports
coat from Benton’s wedding. They also told us that there would be no drinking for anyone under 21,
so we made a quick stop at the liquor store before we got there. We sat at our tables in the ballroom, and
quickly emptied the contents of our smuggled-in pints into our water glasses
and began to get on with the festivities.
The party was okay, the food was good, and the cheesy prizes and stuff
they gave out were kind of fun, but the real entertainment began when we
realized that no one was checking ID’s at the bar. Before you could say “minor in possession”
there were 18, 19 and 20 year-olds lined up at the bar, double-fisting drinks
as fast as they could.
We had all been issued drink tickets before the party. Everyone got two free tickets, then we had to
pay cash after that. For those of us who
were underage, we were supposed to use the free tickets for sodas or
juice. Fortunately for us, and
unfortunately for those who were in charge, the underage tickets were exactly
the same tickets as the legal age tickets. The bartenders couldn’t tell the
difference. That was problematic enough,
but the trouble TRULY began when one of our guys found a complete roll of the
tickets the hotel staff had left unguarded somewhere and “creatively
requisitioned” them.
So there we were – a fully stocked bar and all the free tickets
we could handle!! I seem to recall the
hotel staff trying in vain to keep the bars stocked with booze, wondering how
their counts could have been so off.
They finally shut the bars down around ten and kicked us out. It was a helluva party, made even more
interesting with our finagling of free booze.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way I guess. And we certainly had the will.
CHRISTMAS LEAVE
For our pre-deployment stand down, they split us into two
groups – one group took leave the first couple of weeks of December, and the
other took leave the second couple of weeks.
I took my two weeks of leave during the second half, and over the
Christmas holiday. I was excited to head back home – I hadn’t been there since
my quick weekend trip in September. This
was to be two weeks of rest and relaxation at home, and an enjoyable Christmas
holiday with my family. The most
exciting thing to me was that this would be my last leave – the next time I
would come home after this leave, I would be out of the Navy and a civilian
once again (okay, I’d still be in the Reserves but it was close enough!). The other thing I was looking forward to was
getting ahold of Janet. Janet was the
girl I’d met at a party the last time I was home on leave, and I had spent the
last three months trying to get her phone number from friends of mine in
Laramie. I had not heard back from
either Paul or Allen yet, but I knew that as soon as I got home, I’d be able to
find her again. With this hope burning
bright, I very nervously got on the airplane home.
The trip home was a great one – it was very nice to see my
folks again and to see my friends again.
I swapped stories with my Dad and went skiing with my friend Paul. All the while, I was still trying to track
down Janet’s phone number, and with little or no luck. Finally, after I’d been in town a few days I
went to a UW home basketball game. It
was there that I ran into my friend Allen. Allen was the one I had tried to get ahold of
after my last trip home, in hopes of tracking down Janet's information. He had forgotten about it but promised me
he'd have it for me soon. True to his
word, the next day, he called me and gave me her phone number.
I tried all day to work up the courage to call her, and in
the end I chickened out, and decided to wait until the next day. Finally, around noon that day, I picked up
the phone and called her.
“Hello”
“Umm – Janet?”
“Yes. Who’s
this?”
“Ummm – you probably don’t remember me, my name’s Jerry and
we met at a party in September. I’m the
guy in the Navy. Anyway, Allen gave me
your number yesterday, and I was just wondering if you’d like to go out for a
coke or something…”
The words came out of my mouth faster than an auctioneer on
speed, but I managed to get it all out.
“I sure wish you’d have called me yesterday”
“Yesterday?”
“Yeah, Allen told me that you’d be calling me, and I spent
all day at home waiting for you to call.
When you didn’t, I went ahead an made plans to leave today for
home.”
“Leave for home”
“Yeah, finals are over – I’m going back to Evanston for Christmas
break”
“Oh…okay”.
My world was in ruins – my shyness towards women had once
again proven to be my downfall.
“umm – sorry I didn’t call – is it okay for me to write to
you?”
“That would be great.
From what I remember, I really liked you. Write me a letter when you get back to your
ship and I’ll be your pen pal.”
With that, she gave me her address and we hung up. I was crushed – I had just known that things
were gonna go great for us. I had
completely forgotten about Finals Week and that college students left Laramie
for Christmas. At least she had given me
her address – I knew that she was “the one”, and that it was just going to take
a little longer to get her to realize it as well. I would just write her lots of letters and
get to know her that way instead. The
best laid plans of mice and men…
The rest of leave went fine, and Christmas was great. We spent it at my folks’ cabin in the
mountains, and I gave my brother a Navy jacket with his name embroidered on
it. It was, and is, probably the coolest
present I ever bought for him, and I was damn proud of it. Leave went way too quickly, as always, and
the next thing I knew it was time to go back to L.A. Before I left, though, I told my Dad about
the Tiger Cruise. The Tiger Cruise was
something the Navy did when ships were coming back from a deployment. They let a sailor’s male family members meet
the ship in Hawaii, and sail back on board with us to Long Beach. It was a pretty cool idea, and since I was
supposed to get out of the Navy the day we got home from WestPac, we figured
that we would just drive home to Wyoming after the ship got back to port. Dad and Matt decided it sounded like fun, and
I said I’d send them all of the info I could when I got back to the base. With that, leave was over and I got back on
an airplane in Denver and flew to LAX. I
was back in California…for the very last time!!
NEW YEAR’S EVE, 1990
A day or two after I got back to Long Beach from my leave,
we found ourselves at the biggest party night of the year – New Year’s
Eve. This particular New Years’ was
especially festive, as we said goodbye to the ‘80’s and ushered in the
1990’s. We debated a bit as to what we wanted
to do to ring in the New Year. We
thought about the party at the base club, we thought about going down to
Jack’s, and we thought about going over to Karen’s house. I hadn’t talked to Karen much since the whole
Shaina breakup debacle, but she and I were still on decent terms. Evidently, she had a bit of a falling out
with Shaina as well and was ready to see my side of things. Shaina was now engaged to the same guy who
had shown up with her to Karen’s house the night we got in the fight. Oh well, no accounting for taste, I guess.
Anyway, we quickly vetoed any of those ideas, and had
settled on the debate for either Fourth Street or Belmont Shore. Since we were about to head overseas, and we knew
this would be one of our last chances to see, and more importantly try to score
with, American girls, we decided to head upscale and go to the bars in Belmont
Shore. I don’t recall exactly who all
was in our crew, but it was probably the same group of myself, Haulin, Powell,
Ford, Lusher and various and assorted others.
We jumped on the bus and rode it all the way down Ocean
Boulevard to Belmont Shore, where we got off and made our way to the Bayshore
Saloon. We started our evening off with
a few Shoot the Roots, and then wandered over to the Acapulco Inn. A few drinks there, and we were off to
another bar. We continued this until
around 10:00, when we found ourselves feeling no pain, but realizing that we
had a problem. Our problem was that in
order to catch the last bus back to the base, we had to catch a bus from
Belmont Shore at 11:00. Somehow, we had
failed to realize that it’s no fun to go out on New Year’s Eve if you can’t
stay until midnight. Duh. Belmont Shore was about three miles or so
down Ocean Boulevard from the stop where we caught the bus to the Base. In my state of mind, I figured that I could
walk to the bus stop in time to catch the last bus to the base at 1:00am. I hadn’t really thought about the math – if I
left directly at midnight, I would have an hour to stumble drunkenly three and
a half miles down a busy city street. It
didn’t really seem like that big of a deal at the time.
I ordered up another drink to help me make up my mind, when
somebody said “Hello” to me. That somebody
just happened to be a beautiful blonde girl.
Suddenly, my mind was made up – to Hell with the bus, I was
walking! The girl and I talked for quite
a while, until suddenly, she turned to me and asked
“What kind of a scam are you trying to pull?”
“What?” I was
completely lost at this point.
“You know, you’re all nice and friendly and everything – you
hold my chair out and buy my drinks and say please and thank you…what kind of a
scam are you trying to pull?”
I was still pretty confused and said, “Nothing – I’m just
trying to be friendly”
“Don’t give me that – nobody here is this friendly. You can’t be for real – you’ve got to be
pulling some kind of a scam. And I ain’t
buyin’it!”
with that, she picked up her drink and walked away, leaving
me open-mouthed at the bar. I couldn’t
believe it – I was just trying to be friendly, and she thought I was playing
some kind of a scam. It was at this
point that I realized what a big world it was outside of Wyoming, as yet
another layer of the naiveté was peeled away.
The night was far from over, however. It was still a few minutes until midnight,
and the crowd was beginning to buzz in anticipation. I suddenly realized that I was the only one
of the Fresno guys in the bar. Everyone
else had either gone to different bars or had caught the bus for home. I was feeling absolutely no pain, and I
didn’t seem to think of it as much of a problem. I joined in with the crowd for the
countdown….
“Three…Two…One – Happy New Year!!!”
The crowd went wild, the confetti dropped, the corks popped and
suddenly, an absolutely beautiful girl planted the biggest, sloppiest kiss I
had ever had, flush on my lips. I was
stunned –
“Happy New Year’s, gorgeous” she told me.
I just kind of stood there – “ummm, ummm….”
A guy behind me nudged me “Come on man, kiss her back.”
So I did – I grabbed her and planted the biggest, most
romantic, most movie-like kiss I could muster on her. She took it like a champ and yelled,
“Yahoo!!” when I was done.
I couldn’t believe it!
This girl was beautiful, and she seemed to be digging me! We got to talking, and she told me she had
been watching me all night, and thought I was cute. She then introduced me to her friend and her
friend’s boyfriend (who had been the guy standing behind me). We all shook hands and went over to the bar
for some shots and drinks. The girl and
I talked and flirted, and the four of us drank like there was no tomorrow. All of a sudden, the lights came on and
someone yelled
“Drink ‘em up – it’s closing time!!”
I looked at my watch – 2:00am! I couldn’t believe it – I had stayed until
closing time and missed every one of the buses back to the base. Unless I could find someone to drive me back
to the base, I would have to wait until the first bus ran at 5:30. I was still fairly unconcerned, as I figured
that I would end up staying with this girl at her place. I’d just have her take me back to the base in
the morning, I thought.
They gave us the heave-ho from the bar and the four of us
stood on the sidewalk outside, not sure what to do next. They didn’t have a car, and we were too drunk
to drive anyway. The girl told me that
they were all staying at her apartment, which was just a couple of blocks
away. She stopped just short of inviting
me over, and then the guy stepped in and said,
“Let’s go see if that party is still going”.
Evidently, they had been to a New Year’s Party at a house
nearby before they came to the bar, so we headed off for the house to find some
more action. I didn’t really realize how
drunk I was until I got outside and hit the cool air and then tried to
walk. It soon became a very real and
conscious effort to put one foot in front of the other and stay vertical. I was drunk – not just tipsy or buzzed, but
God’s Own Drunk. I managed to follow the
group to the house, but when we walked inside and upstairs, it looked like
Jonestown - The Morning After…there were passed-out bodies everywhere, and no
one was moving. The party was most
definitely over.
Disappointed, we grabbed a couple of beers and left. As we walked back down the block towards the
girl’s apartment, the three of them started talking amongst themselves. I was too drunk to understand much of what
they said, and I just focused on staying upright and following the crowd. Suddenly, the three of them took off
running. I tried to keep up, but as I
rounded a corner into an alley chasing them, I slipped on the gravel and bit
the dust. I sat up and quickly grabbed
my half-empty beer bottle and took a swig.
Damn! Just when I thought I was
going to get lucky, too. I slowly got to
my feet and I walked down the alley, thinking maybe they were just trying to be
funny and hiding from me. No such luck –
they were gone for good, successful in their attempt to ditch the drunk sailor
in the cowboy hat and Wyoming football jersey.
Now there I stood, alone and drunk in an alley somewhere in Belmont
Shores, California, at about 3:00am on New Year’s Day, 1990. What a way to ring in the new year, and the
new decade.
I quickly gathered my bearings (or at least the ones I could
find) and turned and walked back to Ocean Boulevard. I turned north, and walked towards Long Beach
city center, and the bus stop. I just
figured I would sleep on the bench at the stop until the first bus got there in
the morning, then ride back to the base.
It never really did strike me as dangerous to sleep in the open air on a
bus stop bench in the middle of Long Beach.
I was probably a little more naive that I wanted to believe. As I began the long walk up the street, it
was by obvious that I wasn’t going to make it without a little help. That help came in the way of a
nicely-manicured lawn with a very steep slope that went from the sidewalk along
Ocean Boulevard, up to the front door of a house, about twenty feet away. The slope of the lawn was just perfect for
lying down on and still being able to watch people on the street drive by. I figured I was safe as long as I could see –
but I didn’t really think about the fact that it was going to be hard to watch
anything with my eyes closed. I laid
back on the lawn and quickly fell asleep/passed out. I must have been quite a sight to anyone
driving by – a passed out drunk in a cowboy hat and Wyoming football jersey
laying by the side of Ocean Boulevard.
Even in the land of fruits and nuts, I imagine I was still an
attention-grabber. Surprisingly, nobody
bothered me for about an hour.
About 4:00 in the morning, I felt a very sharp pain in my
stomach and opened my eyes to the sight of a large cop poking me in the stomach
with his nightstick.
“You alive, son?” he
asked.
“Unnnh – yes, sir”
“Are you in the Navy, son?”
“Yes, sir”
“Then get your drunken Navy ass back to the base and off my
street! If I see you asleep out here
again, I’m gonna run you in – you understand me?!”
“Yes, sir”
I got to my feet and began the long walk towards the bus
stop. The policeman hadn’t asked for my
ID, which was a good thing, because the last thing I needed was an underage
drinking citation that morning!
As I made my way down the street, I cussed my decision not
to catch that last bus. The walk just kept
getting longer and longer, and forgetting the lesson I had learned about
accepting rides from strangers a few months ago, I started trying to flag down
cars for a ride. Lucky for me, no one
stopped. Well, almost no one. The one car that did stop pulled over to the
side and rolled his window down. I was
about to ask for a ride when the guy inside asked
“Hey sailor – do you want a blow job?”
I recoiled in terror – with memories of my last ride down
Ocean Boulevard racing through my head.
“Hell no!”
I ran
off down the street toward the bus stop.
I finally got to the stop at around 5:30, and I sat down, exhausted, to
wait for the bus. It showed up right on
time, five minutes later. I got on board
and took my seat, just knowing I had survived my own stupidity once again, and
had one more story to add to the rapidly-growing collection.
The crazy stateside stories would have to stop however, as it was now
time for us to get ready to head back out to sea. That story is chronicled in: Part Eight
– The Farewell Tour – WestPac 1990.
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