Navy daze

I have been writing about drinking; I did a lot of that in the Navy.

I spent a couple of months in San Diego for boot camp.  I lived in California then, so it wasn’t too big a change for me – San Diego weather is SO nice though!  I was there from April til June and we never saw a night cooler than 50 some degrees.

We "graduated" in June and each went on to our next assignment.  I was sent to engineering school in Great Lakes, just outside of Chicago.  There were a dozen or so of us newbies on the plane to Chicago that morning – the airport was very near the boot camp, and I used to look up at planes and wish I was on them, going somewhere else.

Eventually, I was on one of those planes.  We had to travel in our Dress Blues.  13 button broadfall pants and a jumper top – wool.  Nice looking uniform, but.  We drank that morning flight dry – by the time we got to Chigago, there was no more alcholic beverages aboard the plane.  It was right as we landed that I felt a need to "go" but missed the seatbelt sign being turned on, and after circling the airfield a couple of times, I was past ready.  Several of us nearly ran off the plane after it landed, and it was then that I found out what a drag those 13 button pants were.  When you really really gotta go, anything that impedes you is bad, and those pants take a lot of effort to unbutton fully.  (Old timers had the buttons sewn on and velcro to replace them – rip it open and go)

When I got to Great Lakes Naval Training Center there on the shores of Lake Michigan, I found that the drinking age in Illinous was 21.  In those days, drinking ages were a patchwork quilt upon the states.  Arizona had been 19, and Wisconsin, just up the road, was also 19.  The highway past Great Lakes was nick-named "Blood Alley" because a lot of sailors and Illinous citizens were driving to Milwaukie to drink. (and not making it all the way back)

On base, there was an Enlisted Club, and all sailors could drink there.  Since the state’s drinking age was 21, we youngsters were restricted to 3.2 % beer (beer is normally 5 % achohol) and couldn’t order mixed drinks.  One of the nice things about making E-4 rank (Petty Officer 3rd Class) was that I could go to the other side of the club, where I could drink anything I liked, even though I was still shy of 21.  Rank had it’s privilages.  Like everywhere else I’ve been though, if you wanted a drink, stores could be found that were not overly inquisitive about your age, so there was a lot of drinking on the strip outside the base.

I turned 21 there though, so my lack of booze wasn’t that long, and the first thing I did that day (after engineering class) was to go to the Navy Exchange and buy a big bottle of Meyers Dark Rum.

Several of the guys who were in my company through boot camp were transferred to Great Lakes too, and a half dozen of us made the trip to Lake Geneva up in Wisconsin.  One of the guys, who was in training to be a nuclear engineer (thus, "smarter") arranged a taxi to take us up to the lake Saturday morning, and to pick us up on Sunday evening.

We got there on Saturday morning and dropped our stuff in the motel and opened every bar in town.  Yup, the first customers were us sailors.  After swilling a few each, it was decided that what we needed to do was go down to the lake and rent sail boats.  We were sailors, after all.

The weather was nice, but really windy that day, and the lake had white cap waves on it.  In our inebriated state, that didn’t register as something to pay attention to, and the boat guys were more than willing to take our money.  Me and Jenkins grabbed one boat and our friends another.  Those guys couldn’t even get out of the boat harbor, so turned back and gave up, but Jenkins was determined to sail, so we kept going.

For just a few more minutes.

The wind howled up and blew us right the fuck over.  Jenkins, on the low side of the boat, hit the water right away.  I was on the high side of the boat as it capsized and was flung off the boat and right through the sail, ripping it from the mast.  Jenkins saw that and said oh oh and started swimming for the docks. leaving me holding on to the boat, half drunk.  The guys on the dock had seen it, so a "rescue" boat was dispatched and they towed me back in and helped me up out of the water, but refused to give me the deposit back, pointing to the ripped sail as they refused me the refund.

We were completely soaked, Jenkins and I, and my cowboy boots squelched as I walked off the dock.  Of course, the first place we went was to a bar.  And another one, and one more too before going back to the motel to change out of our wet clothes.  We stayed up all day, and closed down the bars that night – and reopened them Sunday morning.  God, I was young then!

US Navy ships have been "dry" since Woodrow Wilson’s wife complained back in 1913 or so.  There are forests of bars around every navy base I’ve been to though, so drinking wasn’t something that took any effort.  It was even semi-approved by the powers that be in the Navy.  I joined in the early days of the "Zero Tolerance" era of the Navy – no drugs of any kind allowed, but drinking?  yeah buddy, let’s go have a couple.

Later in Navy life, when I was on a ship, we sailed into the Virgin Islands, and opened every bar in Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas.  One of the gunners mates got raoring drunk, and decided that the thing to do was to play with the deck watch.  He snuck up to the ship, hiding in the bushes, and when he got to the ladder, he sailed up it and across the flight deck, not asking permission to board, not saluting the flag, nothing.  He raored across the flight deck and dove over the side of the ship, thinking he was a commando or something.  Everyone thought it was really funny, so he wasn’t disciplined more than for show.

If you’ll remember, the first "Casino Royale" James Bond movie starred David Niven and was set on Grand Bahamas island, where there is or was a real Casino Royale.  It was sort of neat to sit in th

at casino and have a beer, but even Budwiser was "imported" and thus, expensive.  Heinekin was cheaper!  Two or three beers broke my budget, so we set out in town to buy something better and cheaper.

We got some good island rum, something over 100 proof, and got blasted on the beach.  That same gunners mate decided that he had to go swimming, that we all had to go swimming, so he rushed into the bay fully clothed.  By that time the rum was gone and someone had bought some Southern Comfort, which I drank a LOT of in high school days, and the smell of which makes me want to puke immeadiately.  (I did a lot of that in high school)

One of our firemen got so wasted that he collapsed on the flight deck after we tottered back to the ship and he passed out on the non-skid deck.  He was bright lobster red by the time someone took pity on that Pennsylvannia boy and woke him up, non-kids marks all over his back.  Poor guy.  Heh heh.

For the officers in the Navy, the first thing built on a new base is the golf course.  For everyone else, the first thing to go up outside the base is a bar.  Or four.  Drinking was not discouraged when I was in the Navy – made you a man and all that crap.

Booze wasn’t my "drug of choice" though, so after I got out of the Navy, I didn’t do much drinking.  Later on, I did pick it up again, since it was legal, and eventually, I did crash my car drunk and nearly killed myself.

But, that’s another story, told here elsewhere.  I don’t drink much at all these days – still have one occaisionally, but not the binge drinking that I used to do, tg.  I’ll talk about drinking in Japan in anther entry.

Stay tuned.

*****